My Dream of Stars: From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer by Anousheh Ansari & Homer Hickam

Author:Anousheh Ansari & Homer Hickam [Ansari, Anousheh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

Training for the Stars

A NOTE FROM HOMER HICKAM

Perhaps a short explanation would be helpful at this point to explain the differences between the American and Russian government space agencies when it comes to private human spaceflight. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the American federal space agency, does not allow private citizens, no matter how much they are willing to pay, to ride one of its spacecraft into orbit. There have been three politicians who have gotten rides aboard NASA’s space shuttle: Senator Jake Garn, Senator John Glenn, and Representative (now Senator) Bill Nelson. Garn and Nelson were key legislators overseeing NASA’s budget and Glenn was famous for being America’s first astronaut in orbit. There have also been a few very important people, such as a Saudi prince, allowed to join a space shuttle crew for a flight. In the programs NASA called Spacelab and Spacehab, active mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, scientists who were not in the federal astronaut corps were taken into space aboard the shuttle to work in special laboratories installed in the shuttle cargo bay. Although these scientists mostly performed very well, NASA has since used only its own astronauts to operate science experiments aboard the International Space Station. Interestingly, the Spacelab and Spacehab scientists were not called astronauts by NASA but were termed “payload specialists” and were not allowed to wear the coveted NASA astronaut golden pin, which is reserved exclusively for the federal employees in the astronaut office in Houston. Similarly, the old Soviet Union mostly flew its own cosmonauts (plus some passengers from other countries for propaganda purposes). After the collapse of the Soviet system, the Russians found themselves cash-poor with few goods to export. One thing they were good at, however, was flying people into space. Accordingly, they entered into an agreement with the American-based Space Adventures company (www.spaceadventures.com) to fly anyone who could afford it into space if they could pass a stiff training program. This helped keep the Russian space program afloat during some tough economic times. The United States, although a partner with the Russians on the International Space Station, also pays the Russian Federal Space Agency for the privilege of flying astronauts aboard the Soyuz to the ISS.

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