Richard Garriot, a big name in Austin tech and gaming community, and gaming industry worldwide, founder of Origin Systems and other gaming companies, and creator of titles such as Ultima Online and many others, British citizen by birth, who is son of Owen Garriot, former US Astronaut (Skylab, Space Shuttle), a self-made millionaire, and now second-generation space traveler, made it safe to space on October 12, 2008 together with his crew mates on board a Soyuz-FG rocket. The mission is the Soyuz TMA-13 and they’ll dock with the International Space Station on October 14, and return to Earth on October 24, 2008.
Very cool and Godspeed!
ceo
What was really cool was being able to talk to Richard while he was in space. He spent a good amount of time on the space station’s ham radio. I got a “59″ signal report from him early one morning during one of the visible passes, and on the next pass my seven year old son had the pleasure of exchanging greetings with him before school started. All of this with a 50 watt VHF radio and a tape measure yagi operating out of my Volvo. He went out of his way to pull the voices of youngsters out of the pileup and answer them. You could tell he really enjoyed sharing his excitement with them. If you ever run into him, tell him “thanks” for doing this.