Esther Dyson, an investor interested in spaceflight who has more gusto than the rest of us, actually has a chance to visit the International Space Station. Similarly, the mastermind behind the Ultima series is there right now — Richard Garriott is floating around inside the halls of the ISS on a ten day trip by way of Space Adventures, a company that launches interested "space tourists" from Russia aboard Soyuz spacecraft.

He's not the only one. In 2007, Hungarian software developer and former Microsoft application overseer Charles Simonyi also took a ten day voyage into the vacuum with Space Adventures — it's becoming a regular geek fest in orbit (and I'm jealous). Esther Dyson has been accepted by Space Adventures as Simonyi's backup. That means she'll go through all the training as the rest of the crew and actually end up as a certified cosmonaut. If anything should happen to him — or if he just feels like sitting the 2009 mission to the ISS out — she'll be able to replace him as a member of Soyuz crew.

If you think you have what it takes to be a cosmonaut, you can follow Dyson's efforts as she blogs them.

Space Adventures, via Flight School Blog, via our sister site, How You Can Save The World