Space Tourism Mini-Boom

Transcendent writes "Russia sent up the second space tourist today. Mark Shuttleworth, a 28 year old computer entrepeneur from South-Africa , was launched up at around 2:22am (EDT) on the Russian Soyuz TM-34 shuttle for $20 million. He'll be spending 8 days upon the ISS in hopes to combat the spread of AIDs in Africa. Catch the (pre-launch) stories at reuters and spacedaily, and the (post-launch) story at CNN with bonus Tito quotes. Not only is he the second space-tourist, but the first African to go into space. It also seems that NASA is accepting the tourism a little more this time."

Comments

First African In Space

[storem]

A lot of information is to be found at the First African In Space website. The are also a lot of pre-launch images in their photo gallery as well as more info on Thawte's founder Mark Shuttleworth.

Re:mmh?

[alnapp]

IIRC, in the case of the first space tourist Dennis Tito the US initially objected, but the objections soon died down when they realised that:

It'd help the Russians pay their way

Public opinion liked the idea of him going

Re:WAR AGAINST AIDS!

[jfengel]

According to the Space Daily article:

While onboard the ISS, he will conduct scientific experiments for South African universities to help combat AIDS and other diseases. In particular Shuttleworth plans to do research on HIV proteins...While in space, Shuttleworth will also study the development of rat and ewe stem cells in microgravity.

I'm not a chemist, but perhaps there are various chemical reactions that are difficult to pull off in gravity. It still sounds like it's 98% "Gee, I'm in space!" and 2% real science, but I hope something useful does come out of it.

NASA can't complain too much

[hij]

It also seems that NASA is accepting the tourism a little more this time.

NASA is stepping up their program to put educators in space. As they do this it will be harder to complain about other civilians in space. Their earlier complaints about the Russians putting up a civilian were a bit of a public relations disaster anyway. (IMHO)

Re:WAR AGAINST AIDS!

[Yet Another Smith]

He's going to modify the deflector array to emit a quasi-symmetric graviton polarity beam

All of this sounds like applying a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem

Unless he's going to get the Vorlons to tweak Thabo Mbeki's mind such that he stops believing that AIDS isn't caused by HIV, and starts pursuing a policy to stop AIDS infections.