Home
Business
Metro
Nation
World
Sports
Feature
Opinion
View more »Opinion Columns
Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
Wheelchair users in good health at Disney disdain norms
Time to speed up in helping delivery drivers to slow down
Sunday
- Subscribe
Related News
Smooth blastoff for space tourist
Source: Agencies |
March 27, 2009, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A SOYUZ capsule carrying a Russian-American crew and American billionaire space tourist Charles Simonyi blasted off for the international space station yesterday.
The Russian rocket lifted off on schedule from the Baikonur cosmodrome facility in a roar of fire and soared into the cold, overcast skies over northern Kazakhstan's barren steppes.
Simonyi, a software designer paying US$35 million for his second trip into space, joined Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Barratt in the cramped capsule.
The three will sit for nearly two days before hooking up with the station, orbiting some 350 kilometers above the Earth.
Minutes after blastoff, TV cameras from inside the Soyuz showed Padalka and Barratt waving for the camera and giving the thumbs-up OK sign.
Standing at viewing stands only a few hundred meters away from the launchpad, scores of officials, reporters and relatives watched the launch, including Simonyi's 28-year-old Swedish socialite wife Lisa Persdotter, who wept and clutched the coat of a relative.
"I'm very, very happy. It was very, very smooth," she said afterward.
Also watching was Paul Allen, a co-founder of software giant Microsoft Co, where Simonyi worked for many years.
"It's fantastic to see a launch, but when it's one of your friends, it's just something so special," he said.
Asked if he would be interested in going to space sometime, Allen said he would consider it; not on the Russian capsules or NASA shuttles, but on one of his own crafts.
In 2004, Allen used his Microsoft fortunes to bankroll SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first private, manned craft to reach space.
Barratt and Padalka will join the current station's permanent crew, but Simonyi will return to Earth 13 days later - making him the first two-time space tourist and, for the foreseeable future, the last.
The Russian rocket lifted off on schedule from the Baikonur cosmodrome facility in a roar of fire and soared into the cold, overcast skies over northern Kazakhstan's barren steppes.
Simonyi, a software designer paying US$35 million for his second trip into space, joined Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Barratt in the cramped capsule.
The three will sit for nearly two days before hooking up with the station, orbiting some 350 kilometers above the Earth.
Minutes after blastoff, TV cameras from inside the Soyuz showed Padalka and Barratt waving for the camera and giving the thumbs-up OK sign.
Standing at viewing stands only a few hundred meters away from the launchpad, scores of officials, reporters and relatives watched the launch, including Simonyi's 28-year-old Swedish socialite wife Lisa Persdotter, who wept and clutched the coat of a relative.
"I'm very, very happy. It was very, very smooth," she said afterward.
Also watching was Paul Allen, a co-founder of software giant Microsoft Co, where Simonyi worked for many years.
"It's fantastic to see a launch, but when it's one of your friends, it's just something so special," he said.
Asked if he would be interested in going to space sometime, Allen said he would consider it; not on the Russian capsules or NASA shuttles, but on one of his own crafts.
In 2004, Allen used his Microsoft fortunes to bankroll SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first private, manned craft to reach space.
Barratt and Padalka will join the current station's permanent crew, but Simonyi will return to Earth 13 days later - making him the first two-time space tourist and, for the foreseeable future, the last.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
