Simonyi set to become 5th tourist to ISS

Dr. Charles Simonyi, 58, who is instrumental in giving the world Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel is all set to become the fifth space tourist to the International Space Station. His sojourn in space will last a couple of weeks.

Simonyi, one of the 400 richest Americans, has amassed a personal fortune of about a billion dollars, has reportedly paid between $20 million and $25 million for the trip. He is supposed to lift off Saturday aboard a Soyuz space capsule with two Russian cosmonauts.

Martha Stewart, the billionaire tourist’s best friend has gone all the way to Baikonur, Kazakhstan, to see off her friend launched into space and to film the event for her television program. Talking about Simonyi’s nature, Martha called him "intrepid, inquisitive, curious and actually very bold."

Simonyi was born on born September 10, 1948 in Budapest, Hungary. His father was a professor of electrical engineering. While in high school he worked part-time as a night watchman at a computer laboratory, overseeing a large Soviet tube-based computer called Ural II.

Simonyi graduated from Stanford University and was hired by Xerox PARC during its most productive period. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1977. At 33, he joined Microsoft, where he oversaw the development of what became its most profitable products, Word and Excel.

Simonyi introduced the techniques of object-oriented programming that he had learned at Xerox to Microsoft and developed the Hungarian notation for naming variables.

In August 2002 Simonyi left Microsoft and found Intentional Software Corp., a software engineering firm which is based in Bellevue, Wash. He got his American citizenship in 1982.

In 2004, Simonyi received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for the industry-wide impact of his innovative work in information technology.

Prior to Simonyi, Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen and Anousheh Ansari have been to the International Space Station as tourists. Their trips were arranged by Space Adventures Ltd., a company in Vienna, Va.

Dr. Simonyi intends to spend his time in space photographing Earth and taking part in experimentation. He is also ready to encounter the possibility of the nausea with Russian conditioning methods that include riding in a spinning chair and sleeping with his legs elevated above his head.

The trip caps a lifelong interest in space and technology for Dr. Simonyi, who said that he was just happy to be finally on his way and is also convinced that one day human will travel and live comfortably in space.