Nerd in space!!

Charles Simonyi goes into orbit next March, he is the first guy from Forbes magazine's billionaire list to fly in space and the "first nerd in space." Simonyi is going where three rich men (and one rich woman) have gone before, but this time the price tag is a bit higher. The standard quote of $20 million is going up to $25 million, and Simonyi is paying a fare somewhere between those two figures, said Eric Anderson, chief executive officer of Virginia-based Space Adventures. Anderson's company has made the arrangements with the Russians for all five of those missions. Simonyi retired from Microsoft in 2002 and now serves as president and chief executive officer of Intentional Software, based in Bellevue, Wash. He is also a philanthropist, making multimillion-dollar contributions through his Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences.

This year, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion, putting him 746th on its list of 793 billionaires around the world. Space Adventures' past orbital clients — California investment adviser Dennis Tito (2001), South African dot-com tycoon Mark Shuttleworth (2002), New Jersey physicist-businessman Greg Olsen (2005) and Iranian-American venture capitalist Anousheh Ansari (2006) — aren't on the list.

The billionaire signed up for the trip several months ago, and since then, he's passed the Russian medical exams with flying colors, Anderson said. That puts Simonyi far ahead of Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto, who had to give way to Ansari, his backup, when he was judged medically unfit for flight. Anderson said no backup has been designated for Simonyi.

Simonyi said he was in talks with space agencies about his participation in experiments on the health effects of spaceflight — for example, studies into bone stresses that are similar to osteoporosis on Earth. Space Adventures recently began offering a $15 million option for a spacewalk, but Simonyi said he didn't have enough time to train for such an outing.

His educational efforts would be focused on a newly established Web site — CharlesInSpace.com — and Simonyi also intended to leave behind a couple of books for the space station's small library: Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" and Goethe's "Faust," in German and English.

Simonyi said he hoped his trip would eventually stimulate the spaceflight market to the point that even non-millionaires could afford to go into orbit. He cited an example from his own career, noting that laser printers started out costing half a million dollars but now could be had for $300 or so.

Anderson agreed that more suppliers would have to enter the orbital spaceflight market before the price could come down. "Because of people like Charles, there are entrepreneurs out there, in the United States, who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to service the future market for orbital space tourism," he said.

"It'll never be $20,000 or $25,000 unless it starts out at $20 million or $25 million," Anderson said.