makerfaire.com:

Maker Faire Bay Area 2009
What's a nice lady like you doing in (a) space like this?

Stage A , Saturday 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Esther Dyson tells tales of her cosmonaut training. Recently returned from five months at the Yuri Gagarain Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow, she comes equipped with photos and stories - and a willingness to answer questions!

Web site: n/a

About the Maker(s)

Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson has just returned from a five-month stint training as a cosmonaut in Russia's Star City. This is the latest chapter in her lifelong education, which she started to take seriously shortly after graduating from Harvard (in 1972, five years after she started) with a BA in economics. Among other things, she has been a fact-checker at Forbes magazine, a Wall Street Securities analyst, the author of a book ("Release 1.0: A design for living in the digital age," Broadway Books 1997), and the author of a commercially successful refrigerator magnet ("Always make new mistakes," which is now also the inscription on her cosmonaut patch). This experience will serve her well in her role as an investor in New Space. (She's also an active investor in a variety of Internet and Health 2.0 start-ups.) Her air- and space-related investments include Airship Ventures (which manages the Zeppelin you may see flying overhead), Icon Aircraft (a new light-sport aircraft), Space Adventures (which organized her cosmonaut training and also runs Zero-G flights), and XCOR Aerospace (maker of the Lynx). She has flown weightless six times and plans to take one of the Lynx's last test flights before it goes into commercial service.