Air & Space Magazine’s Irene Klotz talks with space tourist Richard Garriott, a computer game developer scheduled to fly to the International Space Station in October. A second generation space traveler, his father Owen flew aboard Skylab and the Space Shuttle.
“While computer games have been my vocation, my personal and private investing and side hobby has been in exploration and adventure travel, with a focus on getting civilians into space. Space Adventures, which made history by sending the first civilian into space, is a company that I was the earliest investor in, and still the largest investor, and I’m thrilled that now we’re finally able to allow me to take that journey.”
Sam Dinkin also has a new interview with Garriott over at The Space Review. Garriott talks about the challenges of learning Russian, the similarities between spaceflight and the video games he designs, and explains the experiments he will be conducting on ISS.
Russian doctors have given a clean bill of health to Richard Garriott and Nik Halik, for a tourism flight to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
“Richard Garriott and his backup Nik Halik have been allowed to undergo special physical training at Star City. No contraindications were detected in the candidates against training and the flight to the International Space Station,” said Mark Belakovsky, of Russia’s Medical Biological Problems Institute.
American space tourist Richard Garriott and his Australian backup Nik Halik have begun physical and language training at Star City outside Moscow for Garriott’s planned October flight to the International Space Station, according to ITAR-TASS news agency.
The X Prize Foundation has announced that the Conrad Award Scroll inscribed with the names of the winners of a national space-oriented high school competition, will be carried by space tourist Richard Garriott during his October flight to the International Space Station.
The Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award is a competition for teams of high school students to create a concept to benefit the personal spaceflight industry. The winners, Michael Hakimi and Talia Nour-Omid of California, developed an idea for a device that would effectively monitor all of a human being’s vital signs while in space.