At some point everyone of a certain age must have dreamed of being an astronaut, of flying into space, boldly going where man had gone before. I grew up with a dad who was a human factor specialist for NASA, basically an on-earth test astronaut. Richard Garriott–one of our guests tonight and the subject of Man on a Mission–is the son of an astronaut, Owen Garriott who rode aboard Skylab 2; he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps. Fate, and bad eyesight, prevented him from becoming an official astronaut so he set off to make his dreams come true (and along the way, he became the father of a whole generation of computer gamers.)

It’s a great pleasure to host this Book Salon for My Dream of Stars: From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer, by Anousheh Ansari with Homer Hickam. It’s an engaging read, from a unique perspective, and an enlightening story of real determination.

I wasn’t familiar with Anousheh Ansari’s story before reading this book, but I did know the name “Ansari,” from the Ansari X Prize. That was a contest that offered ten million dollars to the first private enterprise to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space. The prize money was collected in 2004, in an event that captured the attention of space enthusiasts throughout the globe. Most of the prize money was put up by Anousheh Ansari and her brother-in-law Amir Ansari, who are true space enthusiasts themselves.