Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight by Chris Dubbs & Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom

Author:Chris Dubbs & Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom [Dubbs, Chris & Paat-Dahlstrom, Emeline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Memoir, Space, Adventure, History
ISBN: 9780803216105
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2011-06-01T02:26:40+00:00

While Charles Simonyi was finishing training for his April 2007 spaceflight, Forbes magazine named him to its list of the world's billionaires. Although that made it easier to pay the now $ 25 million cost of a flight, he also came with other qualifications.

Simonyi has referred to himself as the first nerd in space, an allusion to his accomplishments spearheading the creation of Microsoft Office's flagship applications Word and Excel. But he was also a pilot, with licenses for both jets and helicopters, and more than two thousand hours of flying time under his belt. His interest in flying and space travel extended back to his teenage years in his native Hungary, when he won a trip to Moscow as Hungary's Junior Astronaut. There he met one of the first cosmonauts, Pavel Popovich.

Simonyi was able to reconnect with Popovich when the cosmonaut attended the ceremonies at the end of Simonyi's April 2007 mission. "He was very friendly and acknowledged our meeting. I'm sure he had only a vague recollection of it, but I had his signature and the postcard he sent me. Back then, cosmonauts were like movie stars or rock stars. When you look at the equipment that they used, you know that they were real heroes."

Like Ansari, Simonyi used a content-rich Web site (charlesinspace.com) to chronicle his space experience with photographs and video, blogs, and an "Ask Charles" section, where he answered questions from visitors to the site. In a separate "Kids' Space," children could learn about space and Simonyi's space adventure and earn a "Charles in Space Certificate of Achievement."

By the time of Simonyi's 2007 Soyuz TMA-zo flight to the iss, Eric Anderson could already boast that SA had created more astronauts than 98 percent of the nations on Earth. "We've turned space tourism from a fantasy, into an idea, that became an industry," he told the BBC. "It's not the dreamers; it's the doers that have created this new market."

Two years later, in March zoo9, Charles Simonyi became the first space flight participant to book a second trip to the iss.

He returned to a much-changed space station. In the interval, the huge Japanese Kibo lab module had been added, as well as the European Columbus module and a final set of solar arrays. No wonder the cost of booking a visit to the iss had by then risen to $35 million.

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