Space Capsule Carrying U.S. Mogul Docks

American Software Engineer Charles Simonyi Paid Up To $25M To Go Into Space

(AP)  A Russian-built Soyuz capsule carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word docked at the international space station late Monday — to the earthbound applause of Martha Stewart and others at Mission Control.

The lifestyle guru was among Russian and American officials and visitors monitoring the docking at Russian Mission Control, on Moscow's outskirts, as onboard TV cameras showed the Soyuz nearing the station and then jerking to a stop. Stewart is a friend of Charles Simonyi, the American who shelled out $20 million to $25 million to be the world's fifth paying private space traveler.

Once the capsule — which also carried two cosmonauts — is secured to the station, it will take roughly two hours before the Soyuz crew are able to open the air locks and greet the station's current inhabitants in person.

The arrival of a new crew is always a happy event, and this time the residents are getting an extra treat — the gourmet dinner brought by Simonyi.

The menu, including quail marinated in wine, was selected by Stewart, who was also on hand for the rocket's launch Saturday.

Simonyi returns to Earth on April 20, along with Russian Mikhail Tyurin and the American astronaut Miguel Lopez-Alegria, who have been on the station since September. The other U.S. astronaut, Sunita Williams, will remain on board with cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.

The dinner is to be eaten on Thursday, which Russia marks as Cosmonauts' Day, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin making the first manned space flight in 1961.

Simonyi, 58, was born in Hungary but now lives in the United States, where he amassed a fortune through his work with computer software, including helping to develop Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

Simonyi was bringing with him a sample of the paper computer tapes that he used decades ago when he first learned programming on a bulky Soviet machine called Ural-2.

While at the space station, Simonyi will be conducting a number of experiments, including measuring radiation levels and studying biological organisms inside the lab.

[extremophil]

It's too bad he couldn't take Martha Stewart with him, and blow her out the airlock.

[annd2302]

It is his money to be spent as he wishes.

Yet, I Posted by tibu987 at 06:47 PM : Apr 09, 2007

Everything after the "YET" needs to be deleted. Your first line said it all

Do you think that money he paid the Russians just disappeared? That it won't be used to feed people, send them to school, pay for roads, pay for hospitals? This money goes into the Russian General Funds and is not earmarked for anything, but what a government must do to serve the people.

Russians are in great need of money, and by earning this money the Russians have made another good move for their country. You can't equate the earning of money by a country to the begging for money of Africa. Africa will always - ALWAYS - be hungry and dying. It is the way they have always chosen to live. Until you stop feeding them and stop babying them they will remain beggers.

You want to help them, teach them! Teach them that there is no such thing as casts, that all people from all tribs are equal. That they have to learn to live with each other. When they LEARN this, then they can be helped, not buying them food, but making them MAKING THEM plant crops, build aquaducts, build roads, build hospitals, learn to govern themselfs...otherwise they are dead, and just don't know it...and its people like you who are killing them with kindness and stupidity. Not going to spell check this - to angry!

[tibu987]

It is his money to be spent as he wishes.
Yet, I cannot help but wonder how many people in the world might have neen saved from disease and death with that amount of money ($25 million).
Oprah Winfrey's building a school in Africa is the kind of thing that people with more money than they need should do more.
Life is fleeting and if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.