Even space tourists have to bring back souvenirs

Odds are that, when you travel, especially to exotic, out-of-the-way locations, you’ll be charged with bringing back souvenirs for friends and family who didn’t get to go. That’s true even for space tourists. Only problem: there’s no gift shop on the ISS. So Charles Simonyi had to improvise when he brought “a plastic shopping bag bearing artifacts” to Seattle’s Museum of Flight on Wednesday. Inside the bag was a glove from the spacesuit he wore on his flight and the drogue parachute from the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft, in which Simonyi returned to Earth last month after his stay. Sure beats something like “Charles Simonyi went to the ISS and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”…