X-Prize Funder Will Be First Female Tourist In Space 95
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters has the news that Anousheh Ansari, the funder of the X Prize, has been named as the first female tourist in space. She'll be going up in mid-September after a Japanese entrepeneur was deemed unfit for the trip." From the article: "Ansari, a 39-year-old chairwoman and co-founder of Prodea Systems, Inc., a digital home technology company, will be the world's fourth space tourist. 'Anousheh Ansari has been officially named to the Soyuz TMA-9 primary crew,' Space Adventures, working in partnership with Russia's space agency Roskosmos to launch space tourists, said in a statement."
Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
To all you geeks knocking her (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To all you geeks knocking her (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't recall people saying any such thing when any of the male tourists went up. So why offer her congratulations just because she's female?
Oh and as for the comments. It's called having a sense of humour. You may want to look it up in a dictionary.
Re:Would you go? (Score:2, Insightful)
20million is cheap.
Re:What the (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it implicitly sexist to make such a big deal out of the first woman in space?
No. Women (especially Iranian women) have greater hurdles to their accomplishment. So the article highlights that she's done something unique by overcoming those extra hurdles. It is only sexist to highlight this if one presumes that these hurdles are innate and not imposed. Second, such a media event could encourage young girls to reject sterotypes and study science and business. This could help increase the pool of engineers and entrepreneurs. Third, because men tend to be dominant in society, one tends to assume things like that the funders of the X-Prize are likely to be all men. Correcting this misperception helps to dispell the underlying stereotypes. So I think it is good to publicize this aspect.
What? No terrorist jokes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember.
They did well, but NASA would have absolutely nothing to do with women in space.
Bloody goddam shame, but then at the time it was a big deal that Jackie wore pants. There were less well known women who got assaulted for doing the same, as I was once assaulted for letting my hair grow long.
People are funny critters.
KFG