Billionaire aims to be ‘first nerd in space’

Agenda for the space trip
Simonyi is to visit the space station during a short-term "taxi mission," in which one Russian-built Soyuz craft is switched out for another. He would ride up from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with two Russians, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, spend about a week on the station, then ride down with two returning station crew members, NASA's Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russia's Mikhail Tyurin.

The billionaire signed up for the trip several months ago, and since then, he's passed the Russian medical exams with flying colors, Anderson said. That puts Simonyi far ahead of Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto, who had to give way to Ansari, his backup, when he was judged medically unfit for flight. Anderson said no backup has been designated for Simonyi.

Simonyi said he was in talks with space agencies about his participation in experiments on the health effects of spaceflight — for example, studies into bone stresses that are similar to osteoporosis on Earth. Space Adventures recently began offering a $15 million option for a spacewalk, but Simonyi said he didn't have enough time to train for such an outing.

His educational efforts would be focused on a newly established Web site — CharlesInSpace.com — and Simonyi also intended to leave behind a couple of books for the space station's small library: Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" and Goethe's "Faust," in German and English.

Thursday's briefing also touched upon the risks surrounding spaceflight, of course. Simonyi said he was reassured by the Soyuz spacecraft's stellar safety record.

"The safety of the spacecraft I'm flying is incredibly good, and the more I learn about the system, the more I understand why that is, it just increases my faith that it will be an incredible mission," he said.

He said he has also worked with the other members of his executive team at Intentional Software to get his affairs in order. "We have taken the appropriate steps, and I can assure them ... that the affairs are in order and the business will continue," he said.

Final-frontier finances
As for the $20 million-plus cost of the flight, Simonyi said he hoped his trip would eventually stimulate the spaceflight market to the point that even non-millionaires could afford to go into orbit. He cited an example from his own career, noting that laser printers started out costing half a million dollars but now could be had for $300 or so.

In those early days, "a personal laser printer was really out of the question, so you have to do these things on the basis of hope," he said.

Anderson agreed that more suppliers would have to enter the orbital spaceflight market before the price could come down. "Because of people like Charles, there are entrepreneurs out there, in the United States, who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to service the future market for orbital space tourism," he said.

"It'll never be $20,000 or $25,000 unless it starts out at $20 million or $25 million," Anderson said.

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