The early top Microsoft exec, who more recently founded Intentional Software, boldly went where few had gone before, by taking a ride into space. As one of the first space tourists, he spent 11 days on board the International Space Station earlier this year.

Oh, also, good friend Martha Stewart was there to see him off (and also watched him at the conference).

By way of background, D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and I host, has been sold out with a long wait list every year we have put it on.

That has meant only a few hundred people can see the interviews and also demos we do live onstage with some of the tech and media industry’s most interesting and important players and products.

The lineups have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt of Google, IAC’s Barry Diller, Meg Whitman of eBay, Cisco’s John Chambers and many others.

And we’ve demoed stuff like the Treo when it first came out, as well as digital toilets, Wi-Fi phones and much more.

We usually post the photos and videos of the interviews and demos six or more months after they take place on a separate conference site. This year, our Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski live-blogged D5, and we also posted video highlights from all of the sessions immediately on our newly launched site here.

Now, we are posting videos of every session of the 2007 conference here, in full, and we have made all our photo galleries, hosted by SmugMug and mostly shot by our fabulous Asa Mathat, public too. You can also access our videos via the site’s master player here.

Every day, I have been highlighting a different interview or demo from the conference and this is the final one, although all are still here for good for your perusal and enjoyment.

Here’s Simonyi:

As if managing the development of Microsoft Word and Excel in the 1980s wasn’t a good enough item for his resume, Charles Simonyi has just made a trip to, uh, outer space. Yes, he is one of the first space tourists, having spent 11 days on board the International Space Station just last month. He will tell us all about it.

• 1:25 p.m. PDT: Session begins with some great video footage of Simonyi’s trip. He enters to David Bowie’s “A Space Oddity.”
• 1:30 p.m. Walt: Space is vast, yet the space station you were in was so claustrophobic–isn’t that ironic?Simonyi doesn’t seem to see the irony, saying that the space station was “quite spacious.”
• Down to brass tacks: What did it cost? Simonyi says estimates have put the cost at upwards of $20 million.
• Kara: Do you foresee widespread space tourism? Will we have a D in space?Simonyi seems to think so. Obviously, cost is a big issue.
• 1:35 p.m.: Walt: Is the space station worth investing in with so many other demands on our federal budget?Simonyi: I believe it is. Once you take the premise that we should be in space, then it becomes a question of: Is the space station the best way to be there?
• So what was it like?Incredibly fantastic, Simonyi says. Beyond all imagination. Like seeing a movie you’ve seen before, but now you’re seeing it in wide-screen with all the special effects.

  Most memorable moment: seeing the space station appear after a two-day journey.

• What’s weightlessness like?It’s enjoyable. … Long-term weightlessness, however, is very demanding. Requires certain behaviors to manage it that can be a bit grueling.
• What did you eat in space?Canned meals – food with a consistency that will allow it to stick to your spoon.
• 1:40 p.m.: How did he feel upon returning to Earth?Simonyi: Everything feels unusually heavy. When you move your head, you have some unusual sensations. It’s best not to move your head at all.
• 1:45 p.m.: Is there any application of intentional software in a world beyond IT departments, the small-business world?Simonyi: In the long term, absolutely. That’s the plan. For instance, Simonyi’s company works on pension systems, using complex software, the so-called intentional software, because it captures intentions (i.e., the needs and goals of any given client).