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Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space
Richard L. James writes "The BBC are reporting that Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, a 58-year old Microsoft billionaire software engineer is set to become the first 'nerd in space' on board the Soyuz TMA-10 when the spacecraft launches on Thursday 09th March 2007. Charles oversaw the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel among many other achievements. He has launched a website detailing the 3 goals he wishes to achieve on the trip: advance civilian spaceflight, assist space station research, and involve kids in space sciences. Jó szerencse pölö Charles!"
I thought Mark Shuttleworth claimed that title (the Ubuntu guy)?
Wouldn't he qualify as first geek in space? I mean, the Russians didn't send a painter up did they?
yeah, cos everyone that's gone to space so far has been a football jock right?
Nerdy? Well can he quote the Holy Grail and make you ROTFLOL?
"Okay this'll get me laid, right?"
Microsoft bashing aside, this is the guy who's founded the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. Richard Dawkins is the current head. I guess that qualifies him pretty much as a (science) nerd.
He still didn't have to put up a Flash 9 only website, though.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I've often thought, whoever came up with this convention for naming variables ought to be shut in a Russian spacecraft and sent far, far away.
Being fired is one thing ... but being fired into space?
I am sure, in nearly half a century of manned space flight there were many cosmonauts/astronauts that are nerdier than some rich Microsoft guy.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Jó szerencse == Good luck pölö == ??? (it could be póló, which means tshirt or a phonetic version of pl, meaning "for example" but I haven't the slightest idea what did they mean to write)
by a native hungarian in the early morning (so if I missed something obvious, it's early!).
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Exactly, he is as much the first nerd in space as IE7 is the first tabbed browser....
I for one am glad we're finally breaking the nerd in space barrier. I mean, it's not like we've ever seen a molecular biologist or astrophysicist go into space. No, they are far too nerdy for something like that.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Charles Simonyi is the Hungarian in Hungarian notation (you know, m_lpszUsrTxt and the like).
To be entirely fair to him, it wasn't intended to make variable names inscrutable, it applied to a language with weak type checking and few real types, and it still has valid uses today if you use it to mark information about the type of data instead of the "type" of variable.
.. do you really really think that to achieve either/or of the 3 goals you need to spend a truckload (or 10) of cash to go into space? Why not use the money to advocate better education, books, and a series of talks by prominent astronauts or the like? I find this to be a colossal waste of finances and time, which could be better utilized.
Usability Engineer, Master in Human Computer Interaction
I guess the submitter (I hope it wasn't the editor's) didn't realize that a heck of a lot of physicists and astronomers and other hard core scientists have been to space way before Charles Simonyi. If his point was that he was the first somewhat famous computer geek to make it into space, he would be wrong again. Simonyi was beaten to the punch years ago by Mark Shuttleworth of Thawte and Ubunutu Linux fame.
The last sentences means good luck Charles.
Almost all current astronauts are engineers and/or scientists, with PhD's and such.
but our first ones were fighter pilots, aka fighter jocks.
Actually they were aerospace engineers and test pilots. They may have also been fighter jocks (although some flew other types of aircraft) since that's about the only way to rack up time on high performance jets, but at the time of astronaut selection they were working as test pilots. Most (all?) of them had degrees in aerospace engineering. (Armstrong was accepted to MIT, but ended up attending a different college).
I wouldn't call them nerds, though.
-- Alastair
"Why it's a good idea to embed the type of a variable in its name has forever been lost on me."
szBeats szMe. szBut szMaybe szHis usHungarian szRoots szHad szSomething szTo szDo szWith szIt?
sz_I p_guess u_congratulations sz_are m_in p_order.
4 eyes good, 2 eyes bad.
"My hovercraft is full of eels"?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I work for NASA supporting the Space Station, and the irony of a Microsoft guy going up is pretty amusing.
8
The crew has a network of laptops running WinXP to do non-critical support tasks, chiefly email. While they work pretty well and generally can be maintained from Houston, the crew does spend a fair amount of time keeping them working. You can often hear tales of woe with the network interspersed with operational discussions on the space to ground audio.
For example, this is from the September 8, 2006 ISS status report posted at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=2199
Jeff's attempts yesterday to set up an Outlook email account for Soyuz taxi crewmember Anousheh Ansari were not successful. This is a repeat of a problem seen with previous email accounts for Soyuz taxi crewmembers. Plans are in work to give the SFP (Space Flight Participant) a regular ISS email account.
I have the feeling that he is going to be jokingly dubbed the "new on-site IT support" by the commander as soon as he arrives.
Worst...sig...ever!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt every Astronaut a nerd? How about any number of non-astro-scientists that I'm sure have been in space doing research?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
"My hovercraft is full of eels"
Can we take up a collection to send a civilian into space with the ability to translate the experience into art? Somebody like Spider Robinson, or Tom Wolfe, perhaps? How long will the most liminal and mind-expanding human experience only be the province of those who lack the passion and subtlety to appreciate it, and who cannot, therefore, sublimate it for the rest of us? "Space. Wow. It was so damn empty. Man, you can see the whole earth! Even the dark bits, without people!" If we send somebody up who has the craft to record their experience in an engaging and creative way, then it is like sending ALL of us into space. I can think of no quicker way to give the space program the cultural boost it needs to survive increasing (understandable) voter apathy. Sure, Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop like chocolate, but they don't deserve the factory...
Don't trust him, he's from "The Company"! Ain't that right Bishop?
That's lpszCharles lpszSimonyi, thank you very much.
This guy was really the first nerd in space...
:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt
He was a geologist from Cal Tech who got to check out lunar geology
up close up close and personal on the Apollo 17 mission.
That's *very* nerdy, in a *very* cool kind of way.
"Jó szerencse pölö Charles!" just doesn't make any sense. If you wanted to right: "Good luck, Charles!", you would say: "Jó szerencsét, Charles!". BTW, you'd rather say: "Jó szerencsét, Károly!" - as the name Charles is Károly in Hungarian. And yes, his original name is Simonyi Károly, written in this order as per the Hungarian custom of naming.
I just wonder how the "pölö" part came into the sentence - as it's not a word in our language. The closest I can think of that it's the pronounciation of the abbreviation "pl.", which is short for "például" - meaning: "for example". I guess you guys asked someone: "How do I say Good Luck in Hungarian?", and the answer might have been: "Jó szerencse, pl." meaning: "For example: Jó szerencsét".
Ákos
a native Hungarian (speaker)
Nah, Ms. Ansari could probably get a date, so she doesn't count.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
I'd have guessed the first nerd in space would be Buzz Aldrin on Gemini XII, the last Gemini flight. He's the one with the PhD in Astronautics from MIT; the rest had masters or bachelor's, highest. Though, all of the Astronaut Group 1 and Astronaut Group 2 and Astronaut Group 3 were pretty much really smart people who have enough intelligence to be considered nerds, one going on to head up software on Apollo.
Not sure if Joe Walker on X-15 flights 90 and 91 (which went past 100km in altitude) should be considered nerd, even with a Physics bachelors degree.
Not sure about the Soviet astronauts' backgrounds either, but judging from the technical school educations, I'd assume it's similar to the astronautics and aeronautics degrees. But they did not appear to have the graduate degree like Aldrin.
...you're all completely jealous.
So am I.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
The grammar nazi allready bashed you for the spelling so I'll take the second round.. :)
:P
Sputnic [sic] wasn't a dog. It was the first satelite launched into space. Sputnik means satelite but also companion, or even better "co-traveller" in russian. Laika was the first dog (living creature [not counting bacteria and the like clinging to the insides of satelites]) in space.
Back on subject, this here Charles is definitely not the first geek/nerd in space. It's a joke to try and take the title just because he's got som media dweebs to back his claim. All true geeks/nerds know the truth anyway..
Cheers!..
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Olsen
He worked at RCA Laboratories the same time I did. I can testify that he is, indeed, a nerd.
Fred
Read the Right Stuff. The scientists running the first missions wanted "Spam in a Can" - monkeys would have done them, and probably would have performed better than the astronauts. However, lowering the entry qualifications *so* low meant obvious problems in recruitment, with too many people flying. So the "obvious" pick was amongst fighter pilots and aerospace test pilots. the latter soon realised they were overly qualified (as both pilots and geeks) to run a mercury or an apollo rig but that got out-balanced by the inherent dangers of the missions. The tests they took to become astronauts could easily have been done by, oh, weight-lifters, long-distance runners etc. However, there's not much glory attached to sending runners into space ...
The Soviets went through a similar process.
The shuttle changes things again, but I would dispute that you need to be a fighter-jock to control it. A bomber or transport or even an airline pilot would be equally, if not better adapted, to deal with the shuttle controls. If they had kept the X15 program going, then that truly was a fighter-jocks dream aircraft and we'd've had returnable aircraft flying today rather than the flying brick of a shuttle.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
I can't wait to see what personSimonyi does to the spacecraftSoyuzTMA-10 conventionNamingConvention.
Kind of retarded for not notiing their have been 40 PhDs in space already as astronauts or shuttle specialists. Plus three of the private astronauts made their fortunes in the computer industry.
Parent post is an AC.
Anyway, in case your interested.
Have you read my journal today?