Anousheh Ansari in space

[Random Traffic Guy]

I don't know how many are following the news, but Plano entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, one of the funders of the X-Prize and general private space backer, is currently in orbit on the ISS. Anousheh's blog from orbit (http://spaceblog.xprize.org/) has some great insights on the launch and view from the ISS, including this pic of DFW airport from the ISS (http://www.flickr.com/photos/spaceexplorer/252459074/). I'm very envious, but someday anyone who wants to will be able to pick their planet :D You think Calatrava bridges are cool, wait until you see what we can do in Mars's .38G!

"Reach low earth orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System" - Heinlein

“Space isn’t that far - it’s only an hour’s drive if your car could go straight up.” - Sir Fred Hoyle

If you're interested, one of the national conferences is in Dallas next year - International Space Development Conference 2007 (http://isdc.nss.org/2007/).

[RobertB]

I can see my (former) house from there!

The thing I like best about Ansari's blog is that it's the first time I feel like I've read a real person's experience. Check out her description of space sickness, a problem faced by 60% of Shuttle astronauts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_adaptation_syndrome). Yet you never get a description like this -- the professional astronaut corps traces its roots to the ultra-macho test pilots of a previous generation, and seems pre-conditioned to deny any perception of weakness. Not so with Ms. Ansari, who has nothing to lose by telling it like it is:

The next morning when I woke up, I was so excited I slipped out of my bag quickly and flew head down to the Descent Module and flipped around and flew right back up to the Habitation Compartment. As soon as I stopped I realized that what I did was not a good idea! I felt my internal organs doing a cha-cha inside my belly…

I stopped and tried to minimize my movements. I basically become a mummy from that point forward. I only did very small slow movements and even that would make me feel really sick…

On top of that, I was having two more space flight symptoms. The first one was lower back pain. Basically your spine stretches because of the fluid and you get taller. I was happy about being taller but the pain was not fun.

The second symptom was fluid shift to the head. Because gravity is not there to help the blood that is pumped by your heart go down to your feet, it accumulates in your head, so your face gets puffy and red and you get a headache. It sort of feels like when you do a headstand for a long period of time.

So here I was with a Big Headache, pain in my back and nausea. I told myself, “This is not a good start — what if I feel like this the entire time!” After vomiting a couple of times, I decided to go for the big guns…

The flight surgeon had packed some motion sickness injections to be used as needed. I figured I really needed it, so I asked Mike and Misha to give me a shot. They consulted on the instruction given to them and decided on half of the medication to be injected. Mike prepared the syringe and Misha administered it. They were both so worried about me and wanted to do something to make me feel better. I felt bad for ruining their first Soyuz flight…

[RobertB]

Today's the big day -- Ms. Ansari (I can't spell her first name without cut-n-pasting) returns to Earth. Her blog half-jokingly notes "Hatch closure official time 1:47 Central Time — after the station was searched to make sure Anousheh was not hiding somewhere and trying to stow away." I continue to be impressed by how "normal" she is -- astronauts always report the experience back in the same way that football players talk about the hits they gave and took during the big game. But Ansari talks about the emotions of the experience, the beauty of the stars above and of the clouds below. A professional astronaut might admit to shedding a tear, like a coach standing stoically on the sidelines after the big win/loss. Not Ansari:

Sting was playing in the background, singing “how fragile we are…” Then Misha told me he had a special surprise for me… He gave me his personal badge, the badge of Cosmonauts and his name tag plus the little Bear that was hanging inside our capsule during liftoff, called “Misha.” You probably saw it in the Liftoff video. He told me “Misha” is the zero G sensor for the trip.

His speech and his special gifts were so touching that I could not hold my tears anymore. I had tried all day to keep it all inside and to act as if everything is fine but inside I felt I was losing something special… It is true that you establish a bond up here that is hard to break. For the past 10 days I had trusted my life in the hands of Misha and LA, they had been wonderful and took care of me like their own sister… They have made this trip so incredibly special for me that I’m sure I will never forget them…

It is hard for me to write tonight. My emotions are high and there are millions of thoughts going trough my head. Every few minutes the tears that I have been holding back come to the surface and my throat starts hurting and then I swallow it all back down again and try to catch my train of thoughts… I was nowhere near this emotional on my launch day. I guess I’m good with beginnings but not with endings…
The Soyuz with the destination sign reading "Earth" leaves at 4:50pm (all times Central/Dallas) tonight. Just before 7:30pm, the rocket engines will fire for the deorbit burn, and at 8:13pm, the landing module will land with a thud in scenic rural Kazakhstan (I had to cut-and-paste that one), right before local sunrise.

[RobertB]

Ms. Ansari will be the guest on KERA's "Think" (the new name for the former Glenn Mitchell Show) today. It'll be sometime between 12 and 2 -- I guess it was a last minute thing, because she's listed on the kera.org front page and on the air, but not on the talk show's web page (http://www.kera.org/radio/think/). KERA has podcasts available, so I'll download it this afternoon (or whenever it's available).

[Insidetheloop]

I had no idea she was the one who put up the $10 million for the X-Prize. The race for the first human private space venture.