http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/08/02/0802garriott.html
Link: For gaming guru Richard Garriott, space trip will be a working vacation.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
For Austin game guru Richard Garriott, almost every vacation is a working one.
He won't be taking a BlackBerry and fax machine with him when he goes on his most adventurous trip yet this fall: a 10-day jaunt to the International Space Station.
But Garriott, who helped start the Austin video gaming industry, is using his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship to do much more than just sight-seeing. He'll be conducting experiments for research institutions, working with a nonprofit to mimic the pictures of Earth his astronaut father took in 1973 aboard Skylab, communicating with students around the world and marketing his latest computer game, Tabula Rasa.
"I have a pretty full schedule of everything from scientific research through educational outreach," said Garriott, executive producer for NCsoft's North American operations. His marketing of Tabula Rasa will involve taking the DNA sequences of several selected players to the station and sending messages to mission control that will be relayed to people playing his game. (...)
Garriott said his interest in going into space stems from the experiences of his father, NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who flew on Skylab in 1973 for 60 days.
"Not only was my father an astronaut but my left-hand and right-hand neighbors were astronauts," Garriott said. "He gave me ... inspiration that it would be fun to do and a deep belief that it would be possible to do."
Garriott, who has been living in Star City, a remote area of Russia, said his "training in earnest began in January." After eight to 10 hours a day of space training, he said, he usually works on e-mails and telephone calls each night to his office in Austin. He's still working on fine-tuning Tabula Rasa, the game that he spent six years to make, but he's best known for his "Ultima" series of computer games.
He returned to Austin late last month, where he was able to catch up on work before returning to Russia for the final time today. He is scheduled to stay in Russia until the Oct. 12 launch....
(((He's blogging it.)))
http://www.richardinspace.com/
(((Thirty million bucks may be a lot for ten days in space, but it's not all that much to settle some issues with your dad's legacy.)))
