This week’s Pathfinder podcast features the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Anousheh Ansari. Before joining XPRIZE, Anousheh co-founded Telecom Technologies, a telecommunication company that integrated voice and data. In 2006, she became the first first-privately funded female and Iranian-American to travel to space and the International Space Station.
This week’s Pathfinder podcast features the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Anousheh Ansari – our first guest who’s actually been to space (it’s shocking to us too that it’s taken this long). After immigrating to the United States from Iran as a teenager, she co-founded Telecom Technologies, a telecommunication company that integrated voice and data. In 2006, she became the first first-privately funded female and Iranian-American to travel to space and the International Space Station.
Catch up: The $10 million purse, sponsored by the Ansari family, set forth a competition to stimulate innovation in private spaceflight. It challenged private entities to design a reusable crewed spacecraft capable of two flights within a two-week period. In 2004, the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team's SpaceShipOne clinched the prize, catalyzing a paradigm shift in the realm of commercial spaceflight. Virgin Galactic eventually licensed the technology for its SpaceShipTwo vehicle.
In addition to Anousheh’s background, we discuss:
• Chapters •
00:00 - Intro
01:02 - Moving from Iran to the US
07:45 - Going to space
10:09 - Becoming the first Iranian-American astronaut
13:47 - The Overview Effect
17:18 - Introduction to XPRIZE
27:28 - The XPRIZE Brain Trust
33:00 - Equity ownership at XPRIZE?
38:21 - Wildfire detection & suppression
39:45 - XPRIZE & Crowdsourcing
41:58 - How has the experience of space flight changed?
46:41 - Regulations in the commercial space flight industry
51:37 - Game changing technology for humanity
55:12 - What does Anousheh do for fun?
56:15 - Favorite sci-fi movies?
56:42 - How to get involved with the X Prize Foundation
• Show notes •
XPRIZE website — https://www.xprize.org/
Anousheh’s socials — https://twitter.com/anoushehansari
Mo's socials — https://twitter.com/itsmoislam
Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace
Pathfinder archive — Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@payloadspace Pathfinder archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/episodes
• About us •
Pathfinder is brought to you by Payload, a modern space media brand built from the ground up for a new age of space exploration and commercialization. We deliver need-to-know news and insights daily to 15,000+ commercial, civil, and military space leaders. Payload is read by decision-makers at every leading new space company, along with c-suite leaders at all of the aerospace & defense primes. We’re also read on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, and at space agencies around the world. Payload began as a weekly email sent to a few friends and coworkers.
Today, we’re a team distributed across four time zones and two continents, publishing three media properties across multiple platforms: 1) Payload, our flagship daily newsletter, sends M-F @ 9am Eastern (https://newsletter.payloadspace.com/) 2) Pathfinder publishes weekly on Tuesday mornings (pod.payloadspace.com) 3) Polaris, our weekly policy publication, hits inboxes Tuesday (https://polaris.payloadspace.com/) 4) Parallax, our weekly space science briefing, hits inboxes Thursday (https://parallax.payloadspace.com/)