A Russian rocket carrying U.S. billionaire Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts blasted off late Saturday from the Baikonur cosmodrome en route to the international space station. The Soyuz rocket roared into the overcast nighttime skies over the bleak Kazakh steppes on-time at 11:31 p.m. local time (1731 GMT), bathing the launch pad and dozens of officials and well-wishers standing about two kilometers (1.2 miles) away in a glow of flame as it rose vertically then turned northeast and disappeared downrange, The Associated Press reported. Simonyi, a 58-year-old Hungarian-born software programmer who helped develop Microsoft Word, paid more than US$20 million (¤15 million) for a 13-day trip to the orbiting station. He is the fifth paying «space tourist» _ or space flight participant _ to make the trip.
