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US multi-millionaire Garriott becomes world's sixth space tourist
American computer game designer Richard Garriott reached space on Sunday aboard a Russian rocket, fulfilling a childhood dream as his astronaut father watched with pride.
- Agencies
- Published: 13:22 October 12, 2008
Baikonur: American computer game designer Richard Garriott reached space on Sunday aboard a Russian rocket, fulfilling a childhood dream as his astronaut father watched with pride.
The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft carrying Garriott and two crewmates hurtled into a clear blue sky from the Baikonur facility on the Kazakh steppe as family, friends and colleagues cheered.
Garriott, a 47-year-old multimillionaire from Austin, Texas, is the sixth paying space traveller and the first American to follow a parent into orbit.
"This is so cool, this is so cool," said Garriott's girlfriend, Kelly Miller, watching the Soyuz soar away.
As the bright orange glow of the rocket disappeared in the distance, Garriott's 77-year-old father serenely studied the sky with binoculars, urging caution before receiving confirmation the spacecraft had reached orbit safely.
"I'm elated, elated," Owen Garriott said when that confirmation came over a loudspeaker, about 10 minutes after the rocket lifted off on schedule at 1.01pm. He smiled and embraced Richard's older brother, Robert.
Miller and Garriott's mother, Eve, shed tears of joy and relief at the successful launch.
"I'm really happy for him. It's one of the things he's wanted to do most in his life," Miller said.
"He's like a kid in a candy shop," she said. "And I already want him to come back." The most recent paying traveller, billionaire American software engineer Charles Simonyi, also watched the launch, and drank champagne with Garriott's family after the craft reached orbit.
Garriott's crewmates on the landmark 100th manned Soyuz flight are seasoned US astronaut Mike Fincke, who spent six months on the international space station in 2004, and Russian Yuri Lonchakov.
Before the launch, the trio emerged triumphantly from a final checkup on their spacesuits to a crowd of hundreds of well-wishers bused in from the nearby city of Baikonur.
As they were driven away to the launch pad, Fincke gestured to his wife and children and mouthed the words "I'll call."
The Soyuz is due to dock tomorrow with the international space station, where British-born Garriott will spend about 10 days conducting experiments - including some whose sponsors helped fund his trip - and photographing Earth to measure changes since his father snapped pictures from the US station Skylab in 1973.
He said before yesterday's launch that he managed to recoup a significant slice of his trip's price - a reported $30 million - through some of his experiments and that he hoped his trip would provide a viable model for financing private space travel in coming years.
"What I am trying to do is demonstrate that you can mount a very successful campaign to go into space and beyond because it's good business," Garriott said.
DNA sequences
One of his most eye-catching initiatives on the mission has been to take up the digitised DNA sequences of some of the world greatest minds and musicians - as well as athletes, video game players and others - to the space station.
The eclectic list ranges from famed physicist Stephen Hawking to comedian Stephen Colbert and Matt Morgan, best known as the "Beast" from the US television show American Gladiators. The digitised DNA is part of "the immortality drive", a kind of time capsule that will also include a list of humanity's greatest achievements and personal messages from Earthlings. The program will be stored on the space station in case calamity were to one day wipe out Earth.
Fincke and Lonchakov, who will remain on the space station for months, told a pre-launch news conference that that their main task will be to expand the space station's capacity to host up to six astronauts, instead of three, by adding sleep spaces, a toilet and more oxygen generation.
Also watching the launch was Yi So-yeon, 30, a bioengineer who became South Korea's first astronaut when she travelled to the space station last spring.
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