Meeting Anousheh Ansari

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-Picture taken at XPFTweetUp by Andy Cochrane-

Anousheh Ansari - Why is this woman amazing?

She is the first ever female private space explorer. She was able to pay her own way up to the International Space Station (trip costing roughly 20+ million) because of the amazing hard work she had put in her whole life. She has gone from Iranian immigrant who could not speak english, to serial entrepreneur living out her dreams on Earth, and in Space. She is the founder and CEO of Telecom Technologies, Prodea Systems, as well as the Ahoora Foundation. The Ansari family was also responsible for providing 10 million dollars in prize money to the X-Prize foundation, which Scaled Composites won. Thanks to that competition, and the Ansari family prize money, Virgin Galactic was born.

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SpaceX: Making History

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SpaceX - Who are they?

SpaceX is an aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, the co-founder of other amazing companies such as Tesla Motors, and Paypal (heard of it? yes you have!). Just like with Robert Bigelow, Elon Musk is an entrepreneur ready to change how we get to space. On September 28, 2008, SpaceX was the first commercial company ever to launch a liquid fueled rocket to orbit the earth. On July 15th, 2009, they were the first commercial company to put a commercial satellite in orbit.  As early as May 8th, they will launch their Falcon 9 rocket, which is being developed for the purposes of launching large payloads, and Astronauts.

Why should we care? Doesn't NASA do that all the time?

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Our Own Personal Space Station

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(Timestamps for video highlights below)

Robert Bigelow

Owner of Bigelow Aerospace, is an entrepreneur with a great vision, and money to burn. He has had great success with his chain of hotels called Budget Suites of America, and now is bringing his business acumen to space. 

So what is he doing for space?

With all of his own money, he has been building the future of space stations as we know it. NASA originally came up with the idea of building inflatable habitats, but for whatever reason had to abandon the program. Mr. Bigelow saw that NASA could not do it, so he decided he would do it. On July 12, 2006, Bigelow Aerospace launched Genesis 1 , a sub-scale model of their inflatable habitat aboard a rocket in Russia. He would be the first to test whether or not the inflatable space station idea could work. IT DID! He launched another similar habitat on June 28, 2007 he called Genesis 2, which although identical, had a lot more cameras, sensors, and some other fun stuff. These space stations are still in space right now! Everyday they collect more data that proves they can be successful building a full scale version of their space station, which would easily rival the International Space Station.

What is the coolest part of this whole story?

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Burt Rutan: Who Is He And Why Should You Care?

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Who is he?

Burt Rutan is the founder of Scaled Composites, and Aerospace Engineer who designed the new sub-orbital plane for Virgin Galactic, the first company to cheaply sell flights to space for only $200,000 (well, it's cheap in comparison to anyone else who was offering). Another big accomplishment of his was the Voyager aircraft, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling.

Why should you care?

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