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Two-time spaceflier offers advice for travelers

With a photo of his Soyuz launch in the background, Microsoft’s Charles Simonyi talks about spaceflight’s physical effects at a Hacker News Seattle Meetup. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi is the only man on Earth to buy a multimillion-dollar ride to orbit not just once, but twice — so it’s worth considering the advice he has for future commercial spacefliers:

“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” he said at a Hacker News Seattle Meetup on Feb. 26. “Don’t worry, be happy. It’s going to work out.”

At least that’s the advice he gave a 9-year-old girl who attended Simonyi’s talk. He noted that the girl, who came to the event with her mother, was about the same age as one of his daughters.

“I’m convinced that people of your age will go to space,” Simonyi told her. “Not that they’ll live there. But I don’t think there’s anybody here who hasn’t flown, right? So it’s going to be somewhat the same.”

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Space billionaire follows his passion: whiteboards

Microsoft’s Charles Simonyi takes a deep dive into software naming conventions during a Hacker News Seattle Meetup. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Billionaire software executive Charles Simonyi spent tens of millions of dollars on trips to the International Space Station, but something completely different gets him up in the morning nowadays: going to work at Microsoft to create a better digital whiteboard.

The 71-year-old Microsoft veteran confessed his love of whiteboards on Feb. 26 during a Hacker News Seattle Meetup.

“Is it the most important thing in the world? Probably not,” he told the standing-room crowd. “Is it important that we all do the most important thing in the world? I don’t know.”

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Billionaire Charles Simonyi muses about moon

Software billionaire Charles Simonyi chats with GeekWire’s Alan Boyle at a 50th-anniversary celebration for the University of Washington’s computer science and engineering program. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Charles Simonyi, the billionaire software executive who’s flown to space twice, says he doesn’t know who’s on SpaceX’s passenger list for a flight beyond the moon and back. But he knows at least one potential customer who’s not on it: himself.

Simonyi might seem to be in the sweet spot for the space adventure, which SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk says is in the works for as early as 2018.

The Hungarian-born computer scientist bought not just one, but two multimillion-dollar trips to the International Space Station, in 2007 and 2009. The Soyuz capsule he rode in 2009 is on display in the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. And thanks in part to his role as the architect for Microsoft Word, his estimated net worth amounts to almost $2 billion.

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