Former lead Word developer heads to space

Its time for some space travel for a former Word Doctor.

This is no usual day at the office for a former Microsoft employee. Dr Charles Simonyi will be headed into space today from Kazakhstan at 1731 GMT.

The 58 year old Dr Charles Simonyi made his money working a program that most of us have installed on our computers, Microsoft Word. The billionaire has spent $20m on the space trip, as well as over six months in an intense and physically strenuous training program at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City Russia in preparation for the journey.

He will be headed up with two other Russian crew members in a trip that will take two days to reach the International Space Station. There, the team will spend ten days onboard and complete 200 orbits of the Earth while performing a series of experiments on radiation in the space station.

The program was put together by US-based Space Adventures who have already sent up four other private trips to space. People interested in keeping track of the 450th person to write their own check to get to space can track his journey on his blog at charlesinspace.com.

[via BBC]

Tags: billionaire, Charles Simonyi, CharlesSimonyi, Cosmonaut, microsoft, Space Adventures, Space Station, SpaceAdventures, SpaceStation, word