Iranian Anousheh Ansari, the latest space tourist with enough bucks (a reported $25 million) to buy her own ride, is spending some time each day blogging her experience–with embedded YouTube videos.
"The launch was very smooth. The trip to the station felt long but it was worth it. I cannot keep my eyes off the windows. Earth is magnificent and peaceful from up here. You don’t see any of those awful things you hear on the news, from up here…As they pulled the hatch open on the Soyuz side, I smelled ‘SPACE.’ It was strange… kind of like burned almond cookie. I said to them, ‘It smells like cooking’ and they both looked at me like I was crazy and exclaimed:’Cooking!’
"I said, ‘Yes… sort of like something is burning… I don’t know it is hard to explain…’”
Ms. Ansari has big plans for future $200,000-a-ticket suborbital jaunts in a mini-space shuttle.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 