Bill Gates may venture into space, says Charles Simonyi
12 Apr 2007
Mumbai: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates may be planning to venture into space, Charles Simonyi, the Microsoft millionaire and the fifth civilian in space, told a fellow space traveller.
Simonyi, inventor of the Word, told his new space friend, cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates - the richest man on Planet Earth - is planning a trip into space.
In a news conference broadcast from the ISS and shown
on Russian state television, cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin
said that he heard this from Charles Simonyi.
Simonyi reportedly paid as much as $25 million for the
spacefare, room and board, which also included physical
training and Russian language instruction since last October
at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, near Moscow.
Simonyi blasted off from the Soviet-built Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan on April 7, accompanied by two Russian cosmonauts,
Commander Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov.
Space Adventures, the US-based company that organises
the orbital trips, said it had heard nothing from Gates
about a possible flight.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Russian space agency, Igor
Panarin, said Gates "visited us several months ago
at the cosmonaut training centre at Star City" near
Moscow.
"However,
for now there are no negotiations on taking part in a
tourist flight. We have not had any official request from
Gates," he said. "But if Gates expressed interest,
we would help him."
The first slot for a potential Gates flight would be in
2009, he said.
