Former Microsoft man goes into space

Charles Simonyi, 58, will ride a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS where he will stay in fairly low star accommodation for a week.

The mission will take place in Spring 2007 and will involve him carrying out various scientific experiments on board.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Simonyi joined Microsoft in 1981 where he became Vole's director of application development and chief architect. At Vole he was responsible for overseeing the development of Word and Excel. He later went on to co-found Intentional Software with Gregor Kiczales in 2002.

He might be reassured that while he was helping build software for Vole, his Russian counterparts where developing their space programme on machines built in Plovdiv, Bulgaria that were basically Apple Mac specs nicked by the KGB. So, god forbid, if anyhing goes wrong he will not see a blue screen of death.

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