Soyuz With Richard Garriott Successfully Launched 56
Toren Altair writes "Soyuz TMA-13 with ISS Expedition Crew 18 and Richard Garriott successfully launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:01 UT (3:01 EDT). The Soyuz capsule will dock to the ISS in two days. Garriott will return to Earth with Expedition 17 crew members, Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko on October 23."
With the extra attention on this launch, the Russians have gone out of their way to say that the return of the Soyuz vehicle will be safe, after a couple of different malfunctions in the past year. Garriott is in space partly for recreation, and partly as a promotion for his latest MMO, Tabula Rasa. He took with him a hard drive filled with information about humanity, as well as DNA sequences from Tabula Rasa players and various celebrities (including Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking) to 'preserve' that data in case of a disaster on Earth. Garriott will also spend time running and participating in experiments. Coverage of the Soyuz mission is ongoing at NASATV.
Tabula Rasa (Score:3, Interesting)
If you haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend checking out Tabula Rasa [amazon.com] . It's one of the better RPGs set in space, and I like how it has adopted ideas from science fiction writers like Vinge. Going into space seems a great way to support it, but it's a pity that the mass media now considers human spaceflight so meh that even a freakin' computer game legend going into orbit won't win too much attention for the game.
so the father, so the son (Score:5, Interesting)
On a side note,
Richard Garriot, apart from being a successful video game writer, is in fact the son of a former NASA astronaut. [timesonline.co.uk]
Re:Tabula Rasa (Score:4, Interesting)
Good for him (Score:5, Interesting)
You would think some bigwig like Mr. Garriot would go out to eat, but no, he was standing in line with the rest of us schmoe's at the cafeteria.
I didn't even take notice of who was who until someone asked if they could sit at the only empty chair across from me, to which I muttered "whatever" and went on reading my material. When I finally looked up, I was shocked to say the least. The interesting thing was that Mr. Garriot spent the hour and a half talking to me, laughing at his past antics, moaning about all that money he had to spend on his "castle sinking". Even when we were interrupted by the occasional fan asking for his autograph, this man never once got upset or even looked cross.
I'm not much for meeting a lot of the Game Developer Gods, I've had my share of not-so-good meetings, but I will say "Good for you Richard", reach for the moon, if you miss, you will still be among the stars!
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
He took with him a hard drive filled with information about humanity, as well as DNA sequences from Tabula Rasa players and various celebrities (including Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking) to 'preserve' that data in case of a disaster on Earth.
Okay, I understand the concept of "publicity stunt", however...
What exactly is having this material a couple hundred miles above the planet supposed to accomplish, exactly? In case of a disaster on the Earth, was he thinking he'd do a spacewalk and try to throw it in a direction away from Earth? Good luck generating escape velocity that way, buddy.
Or did he think this planet-wide disaster would be over quickly, leaving an Earth-side genetics lab intact so he could return to Earth safely and somehow recreate a new race to be known as The Nerdlings? Tabula Rasa players, yeah that's the building blocks of an advanced civilization...
Re:so the father, so the son (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone else know if this is the first time that such a "space dynasty" has occurred?
Have there been any other cases of descendants, siblings, spouses, etc.... both going into space?
No real reason for asking... just kinda cool.