A small step or a big step for the first female tourist to space

This is a hot news item of the week and it will continue to be until September 14, the date Anousheh Ansari will be blasted into space in the Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, and she was able to fork out $20 million to be the first female tourist in space, and that’s a considerable cough-up for a petit lady of Iranian origin that came to the U.S. in 1984 and got her Masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science, and went on to work for MCI.

Where does all that money come from? That’s the interesting part of it because she was a co-founder of a company called Telecom Technologies Inc. with her husband and brother in-law and made a fortune when Sonus Network Inc. bought it for an estimated $180 million. Now the group has started another venture capital company called Prodea that has its eye on space travel vehicles and is working with Space Adventures, Ltd. and Federal Space Agency of Russia. The $20 million could be a drop in the bucket and a huge start that could turn out to be successful. Some have called it the American dream and it must be a wonderful achievement for recent immigrants to take a good bite out of the American pie. Good for them, it’s something to keep an eye on, and a good accomplishment Iranian women could look up to.