gee, it must suck to be the first female space tourist

space.com has a somewhat interesting article on the preparations of anousheh ansari to fly aboard the soyuz as "the first female space tourist."

the editors at space.com have done an interesting job of translating this article from what i can only assume was russian, but what i find more interesting is the last paragraph of the article:

However, just like passengers of US-bound flights, Ansari won't be able to carry any make-up on board. "I believe she is ready to sacrifice more than that for the sake of fulfilling of her dream," the unidentified IMBP official told Interfax when commenting on the cosmetics ban.

so, in other words, the poor woman has to go without makeup for TEN WHOLE DAYS in order to fly into space, and isn't that sad. great reporting there from mr. simon saradzhyan. but i can't help thinking that the quote from the "unidentified imbp official" is pretty snarky. the soviet union has been launching women into space (without their makeup, if you can believe that) since valentina tereshkova flew in vostok 6 in 1963.

nice work from space.com. the bbc article on ms. ansari's flight actually covers the important topics: she's an iranian-american businesswoman, she funded the x-prize, and now she's working with space adventures to bring space tourism to a wider group of people -- in short, a perfect person to be a space tourist.

but oh, how do those female astronauts deal with not having any makeup in orbit?