Mark Shuttleworth
- Soyuz TM -33 TM-34/Sojus (2002)
Mark Richard Shuttleworth ( born September 18, 1973 in Welkom, Free State Province, South Africa) is a South African entrepreneur. He became known as the first African in space (this gave him the nickname in South Africa Afronaut ) and. Than second space tourist, as well as the founder of the Ubuntu project
Life
Shuttleworth was born in the Gold mining town of Welkom. After a few years attracted Marks parents, Richard and Ronelle, to Cape Town ( Western Cape ) because his father got a job there as a surgeon. There, Mark attended the first private Diocesan College. After his graduation in 1991, he started at the University of Cape Town ( UCT ), South Africa's oldest university, business administration and computer science to study. In 1996 he received from the UCT a bachelor's degree.
Since 1995 he is working on the Debian Linux distribution with as a developer. During his senior year, he founded his first company in December 1995: Thawte Consulting, which he headed from his parents' garage from. It initially advised local business clients on the Internet, then specialized in web security and is today the world leader in the procurement of so-called digital certificates. Shortly before the collapse of Internet companies on the stock exchange ( dot-com bubble ) Shuttleworth sold exactly four years after its founding Thawte, in December 1999 for an estimated 500 million U.S. dollars to the U.S. company VeriSign.
Back in September of 2000, the company Shuttleworth HBD Venture Capital to life. The name is an abbreviation of a name, the English navigator used earlier to characterize not yet charted areas: Here Be Dragons ( German: live dragons). The risk investment company invests in innovative South African company. Soon followed by The Shuttleworth Foundation ( TSF), promotes a non-profit organization, educational projects in South Africa. The TSF raised immediately after its formation, the so-called Freedom Toaster from the baptism. Ticket machines similar, you can burn at public access places open source software on CDs, because in South Africa the telecommunications network is partially pretty rudimentary.
Shuttleworth founded in the spring of 2004 his next company: Canonical Limited in the Isle of Man is sponsoring the Debian-based Linux distribution Ubuntu, and other projects in the open source area. The long term, profitable to Canonical are offering paid support for this software. His remains close ties to the Debian Project documented Shuttleworth including through its active participation in the annual Debian Conference. His company employs about 20 next Debian developers and programmers of Linux projects GNOME and KDE - whose patronage he took over in October 2006.
Mark Shuttleworth has left Cape Town in February 2001 and has since lived on the Isle of Man. He holds dual British and South African citizenship is single and childless.
The flight into space
Shuttleworth had always dreamed of being able to fly into space once. Had he first assumed this possibility would provide, only if the space for everyone is possible, he saw his chance when Dennis Tito, the first space tourist in April 2001. He took with Space Adventures to contact, a private U.S. company to promote space tourism, which had already allows Tito's flight. He also turned to Tito himself, telephoned several times with him and visited him in June 2001. A month later, Shuttleworth participated in Star City near Moscow his seven- month training on, after he had passed all medical tests. Six months later, the final contract of his Mitflug to the International Space Station (ISS ) was signed.
On 25 April 2002 Shuttleworth launched as a member of the third ISS visiting team with the Russian Soyuz TM -34 into space. Two days later, the Soyuz spacecraft moored to the space station, where since December 2001 survived the fourth long-term occupation and worked.
Shuttleworth had not only paid around 20 million U.S. dollars for flight training and he had come up for the cost of five experiments which he carried out during his eight-day stay. On one of the projects also German scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry were involved. They had developed with the South African University of Port Elizabeth, the experiment SPC ( Soluble Protein Crystallization ) in the discovery of protein crystals. Stood by both ocean observation and research on stem cells and the cardiovascular system on the program. In addition, Shuttleworth held a lesson with mathematical and scientific focus, the persecuted around a hundred thousand students in South Africa. On May 5, he returned with Soyuz TM -33 back to Earth.