Seeing The Sights

He really must have enjoyed it the first time. Wildly rich software developer Charles Simonyi blasted off today on his second $35 million trip to the International Space Station. He is the first non-astronaut to make 2 flights.

The first one was in April 2007 when he got to spend a whole 2 weeks in space. Did you realize that at one time 2 weeks was the maximum endurance record for human beings in space after a particularly grueling torture test on Gemini 7?

Now it's just the current record for tourism.


And his records should stand for some time since Mr. Simonyi will be the last space tourist for the forseeable future. The Space Station crew is being increased to 6 with this flight. Since the Space Shuttle is retiring soon, all the seats on Russia's Soyuz ships (which carry all the tourists) will be filled with real astronauts.