Several possible reasons: - Touva was probably not Feynman's main goal, but trying to get there is by itself an adventure with Ralph, his friend. - He had can

Several possible reasons: - Touva was probably not Feynman's main goal, but trying to get there is by itself an adventure with Ralph, his friend. - He had cancer for almost 10 years. This must have had a tremendous impact on his health. - It was the mid-80s, you couldn't just Google about Touva and find out about it. - The cold-war was still going on. And probably USSR was still very much a black-box. - He worked on several government projects (imagine what security clearance he was when he worked on investigating the Challenger explosion), so going to the a country within the USSR was probably a real challenge. Granted he could pull some strings in the government to get a piece of invitation paper, but that's not the point. Plus after reading about Feynman, he's not the type of people to do something like that just to go to another mysterious country. He'd find creative ways to do his goal and enjoy the the process as things unfolded. If you feel disappointed about Feynman coudln't fulfill his goal of reaching Touva, then you have miss the point about the whole story. Nonetheless, he did get an invitation to go to Touva a few days after he passed away. So he did succeed after all. And no, there's nothing specific about "entrepreneurial thoughts" in the video, so you have had a wrong expectation to begin with.