Iranian Space Tourist

There she is, the to-be-first female space tourist and she's Iranian, no less. Although now Anoushe Ansari is, like all good Iranians, also a naturalized US citizen. The Russian Federal Space Agency made the announcement last week that she could be in space as early as the fall of 2006, though she is scheduled for a spring 2007 flight on the Soyuz spacecraft. Her family made it big time with their telecom equipment company which is now an investment firm called Prodea, Inc., and have since invested quite a lot of money in space tourism. The cost? A minimum of $20 million -- I guess Bill Gates just doesn't like to fly high, otherwise, surely he would have been first in line for a chance at space tourism.