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Anousheh Ansari may not rank on the Forbes World's Most Powerful Women list. But next year, she'll stand hundreds of miles above them.
The chief executive of Telecom Technologies, Ansari is the force behind the Ansari X Prize, a purse created to spur the development of commercial space craft. The flight of the reusable SpaceShipOne--funded by billionaire
Now, like the seminal scientists and engineers of yore, the Iranian-born American businesswoman is reportedly going to use herself as a guinea pig.
Ansari is going to brave the edge of the vast cosmos. According to an article from the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news wire, she is likely to be the first female "space tourist" to fly to the International Space Station (ISS). The DPA quoted Russia's Itar-Tass news agency as saying that the CEO may make a short yet indubitably risky flight to the ISS orbiter next spring, embedded with a Russian crew.
Tass said that Ansari in February passed the required medical screening for enrollment at the Gagarin cosmonaut training center, named for the astro-hero of the defunct USSR, Yuri Gagarin.
Another indication that Ansari is likely to make the big jump: She has been designated as the understudy for Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto, if he is unable to make a planned nine-day flight to the station this autumn.
For such an honor, of course, personal sacrifices abound. How about the price tag? Reportedly, Ansari's cosmological jaunt will run some $20 million, the same bill levied on her three star-tripping predecessors.
On the trail blazed by Laika the half-Husky and Ham the chimp, other spacefaring mammals included U.S. businessmen Dennis Tito and Gregory Olsen, who flew to the ISS in 2001 and 2005, respectively; and South African Mark Shuttleworth, who went in 2002.
(For lots more on the leisure lifestyle of the future, see Forbes.com's exclusive Business of Space series.)
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