Charles Simonyi to become world’s fifth space tourist

A former Microsoft programmer Charles Simonyi is soon going to become the world’s fifth space tourist. He would be traveling to space aboard a Soyuz rocket.

Incidentally, he learnt the basics of programming on a Soviet-era computer called Ural-2 and he would be carrying a paper-tape memento from that first computer on his trip to the space.

He said: “I will take one of those paper tapes with me to remind me where it all started.”

He had moved to US at 17 to study engineering and computer science. At Microsoft he worked on two of the most popular software applications in the world now MS Word and MS Excel.

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