Ground control to Major Charles. For the second time in as many years, Charles Simonyi, the man who brought you Word and Excel, will be orbiting the earth with Russian astronauts.
Simonyi blasted off Thursday in the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and is traveling with American astronaut Michael Barratt and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. If all goes according to plan, the group is expected to reach the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday.
This is Simonyi's second space odyssey. His first space adventure was in April 2007 aboard the Russian rocket Soyuz TMA-10. Simonyi has reportedly paid a total of $60 million for both trips.
The Hungarian-born tech genius was a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, where he was the director of application development, chief architect and distinguished engineer.
While at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, Simonyi oversaw the development of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Multiplan, the predecessor to Excel.
Simonyi left the company in 2002 to start up Intentional Software in Bellevue, Wash. The company develops relationship technology linked to software by recording the "latent value of business domain and programming intentions in processable form and transforming them into the intended software," according to the company's Web site.
Prior to his tenure at Microsoft, Simonyi was at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) from 1972-80 where he developed Bravo, the first the first WYSIWYG text editor.
Simonyi's personal life has been fodder for gossip columns, which have chronicled his 15-year relationship with domestic diva Martha Stewart. He is now married to Lisa Persdotter.
