Billionaire software magnate, Charles Simonyi, took his second flight into space yesterday on a $35m trip to the International Space Station. He is likely to be the last space tourist for a while as they plan to increase the capacity of the space station and will not have enough room for paying passengers. One has to admire the man or any person for that matter that has the balls to blast off into space. I know I would wet myself…..
Maybe that’s the origin of the Russian superstitious behaviour of urinating on the back wheels of the transport bus that takes them to launch pad. He did this on his last space trip, and knowing the nature of superstitious behavior, it is unlikely that he and his fellow cosmonauts would have not relieved themselves again for luck. So well done Charles. And well done for your support of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Engagement of Science recently vacated by Richard Dawkins.
3 Comments
March 28, 2009 at 7:21 am
I can well understand why it is the Russians that would have had this superstition. There was a reason why, in Soviet times, missions were only publicised once they were successfull.
March 28, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I never would have guessed that there was a Russian cosmonaut tradition of peeing on a bus tire prior to blast-off. I just assumed they got drunk first.
July 6, 2009 at 5:05 pm
[...] some of her relics are to be taken into space in 2011 by the US astronaut Ronald Garan. I thought Charles Simonyi urinating on the Russian Cosmonaut launch bus for luck was bad enough. This doesn’t seem appropriate as part of a scientific expedition. What if the [...]