Space Tourist Blasts Off: US Billionaire Charles Simonyi in Orbit

by Tina Kells | March 26, 2009 at 01:01 pm

216 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

An American space tourist was thrust into orbit today, his second trip into outer space. It was blast off time for US billionaire Charles Simonyi and the crew of the Russian rocket Soyuz, Thursday, amidst cheers from excited onlookers.

Charles Simonyi paid $35 million US for his second launch into space. He and the crew will orbit the Earth for two days before attaching to the International Space Station. Simonyi is a former Microsoft executive and CEO of International Software.

For 15 years Charles Simonyi dated ultimate homemaker Martha Stewart. They split in 2008 and he quickly found love with 28-year old Swedish Socialite Lisa Persdotter.

Simonyi and the Russian-American crew were launched into space from the Baikonur cosmodrome facility in Kazakhstan. Borat must be so proud!

Simonyi, a 60-year-old software designer who paid $35 million for his second trip on the Soyuz, joined Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Barratt in the cramped capsule, where they will sit for nearly two days before hooking up Saturday with the station, orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth.

Minutes after blast-off, TV cameras from inside the Soyuz showed Padalka and Barratt waving for the camera and giving the thumbs-up OK sign.

At viewing stands about a mile (kilometer) away, scores of officials, reporters and relatives watched the launch, including Simonyi's 28-year-old Swedish socialite wife Lisa Persdotter, who wept and clutched at the coat of her mother.

"I'm very, very happy. It was very, very smooth," she said afterward. "But I'm very emotional," she added.