Garrett’s flight is presently scheduled for October 2008. To learn more about his space mission go to his website “Richard Garriott’s Space Mission” at http://www.richardinspace.com/.

Besides being a well known game developer, Richard Garriott is also the son of former NASA astronaut Owen K. Garriott, who made the public statement concerning his son, “Because of my career, it was almost natural for Richard to be interested in space and exploration. I am so pleased that he is able to embrace this himself and that he is dedicating his flight to research. I am very proud of him.”

Owen Garriott flew as science pilot on Skylab 3 (SL-3), the second manned mission of the first space station for the United States, from July 28 to September 25, 1973, and as mission specialist 1 for Space Transportation System 9 (STS-9), from November 28 to December 8, 1983.

According to the website of Space Adventures: “It has always been Space Adventures’ goal to open the space frontier. Now, with Richard’s flight, we have designed a series of missions devoted to increase commercial involvement in manned space missions. It is a very rare occasion when so many commercial opportunities are available in one space mission. We encourage interested parties to contact us.”

Garriott responded to being given the chance to ride to the space station with the help of Space Adventures by saying: “I am dedicating my spaceflight to science. It is my goal to devote a significant amount of my time aboard the space station to science, engineering and educational projects. I understand the necessity for conducting research in extreme environments whether it is collecting microorganisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents to carrying out experiments in the continuous micro-gravity of Earth orbit. We need to be adventurous in mind and stimulate our intellects to answer today’s most daunting scientific questions and to invent tomorrow’s technological marvels.”

One of his duties while at the International Space Station will be to perform scientific work for ExtremeZyme, Inc., a biotechnology company. Specifically, Garriott will perform experiments involving protein crystallization, especially with regards to cellular functions of proteins, the protein’s relationship with human diseases, and drug design based on these proteins. (Garriott was involved in the founding of the company.)

Garriott, born July 4, 1961, developed the highly popular fantasy computer role-playing game Ultima and Ultima Online, co-founded Origin Systems (which deals with computer game developing and publishing), co-founded Destination Games, and co-founded the North American branch (NC Interactive) of the Korean-based online computer gaming company NCsoft.

While learning to program computer games in high school, Garriott picked up the nickname “Lord British” from fellow students at Nassau Bay, Texas, who thought he spoke with a British accent. (Nassau Bay, Texas, is located outside of the NASA Johnson Space Center.)

Richard Garriott is on the board of directors of Space Adventures, Inc. Owen K. Garrett is a member of the company's astronaut advisory board.

{moscomment}