Billionaire tourists in space, next: you and me

Ever read through science fiction novels or sci-fi TV shows and movies and wanted to travel amongst the stars yourself? Billionaire space tourists and NASA astronauts might be the ones up there today, but everyday human spaceflight is most definitely the future.

Today, if you want to go into space, and you’re not in the US, Russian or Chinese space program, all you need is money and good health, and you too can become an astronaut, years and most likely several decades before spaceflight to future space colonies is an everyday occurrence.

The latest man to join the ranks of the space faring is the billionaire and ex-Microsoft employee Charles Simonyi, known for helping bring Microsoft Word to the world, now one of the most popular software programs of all time, and partly responsible for untold billions of dollars of profit.

Originally born in Hungary, but now an American citizen, Simonyi is 58 years old and passed the rigorous training required of all space tourists to ensure as safe a journey into space as possible. Simonyi blasted off into space on Saturday on board the Soyuz TMA-10, and is now the fifth space tourist to have joined all the military and scientific astronauts to have visited space over the last few decades, showing that the desire to travel into space and take part in the world’s only true ‘out of this world’ experience is only going to get progressively stronger.

Naturally, there is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space trips to come in 2008, but let’s face it: this is not true space travel, but merely the briefest of visits into the heights of our upper atmosphere where weightlessness starts taking effect.

However, going to the International Space Station and spending 12 days in orbit is certainly true space travel, and is something that all the great science fiction writers would be proud of, although I’m sure many of them would be wondering why it is that in 2007, we are still a largely planet-bound species, seemingly having failed to capitalize on the extraordinary achievements of the Apollo missions that (reportedly) took us to the moon and back on several occasions.

It has been well reported that Simonyi’s trip has cost him a cool US $25 million dollars, although the steadily weakening US dollar and inflationary pressures have obviously been at work – from memory, the trip used to cost only US $20 million, so unless I am mistaken there has been a 20% increase in the cost. You really do need to be a billionaire for these things not to matter too much.

Joining Simonyi on his journey are two cosmonauts who will pilot the Russian Soyuz spaceship and who would most likely have been carrying out this mission whether Simonyi wanted to travel or not, as the International Space Station (ISS) receives supplies and more on a relatively regular basis.

According to the Associated Press, Simonyi “will be conducting a number of experiments, including measuring radiation levels and studying biological organisms inside the lab” while at the ISS.

The four previous space tourists include the very first, Dennis Tito, who in May 2001, where he paid US $20m and spent 8 days in space. Perhaps Simonyi’s extra US $5m is to pay for the additional 4 days he will spend up there.

Mark Shuttleworth, a South African who was only 28 years old at the time and an Internet zillionaire, was lucky enough to travel to the ISS in April 2002 as space tourist number 2.

The third lucky tourist-o-naut was Gregory Olsen who travelled in October 2005, while number four was the Indian-born but now American citizen Anousheh Ansari. She became the first ever female tourist in space.

U.S. millionaire Gregory Olsen started his flight to the ISS as the third space tourist, or a private science researcher as he regarded himself as, on Oct. 1, 2005, onboard a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-7 capsule.

The 60-year-old chief of a New Jersey-based infrared-camera company reportedly paid 20 million U.S. dollars for the 12-day flight.

Iranian-born American Anousheh Ansari became the fourth but the first female space tourist in Sept. 2006.

So, there have now been five space tourists, with the fifth up there right now, orbiting the mostly harmless blue planet that is Earth. Sadly, it will still be decades before space flight is as common as a bus trip, but don’t panic: the force is with us as the human journey into space, infinity and beyond moves into a higher orbit at last.