Word: spaces
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Richard Garriott has made a career and more than one fortune as a preeminent computer game designer and creator of the seminal Ultima role playing series. But as the son of SkyLab astronaut Owen K. Garriott, his passion has long been space flight. Now, at a reported cost of more than $30 million, he will become the sixth private citizen to travel into orbit. Garriott is preparing to join the crew of the Soyuz TMA 13 mission as a spaceflight participant, thanks to Space Adventures, a company he helped found. He spoke to TIME about his upcoming voyage from...
...You?re a second-generation spaceman. Had you applied for the U.S. space program as well? No, I never applied. I was told no before that ever occurred. Because my father was an astronaut, the NASA clinic was my family doctor, you might say. And one year when I was a young teenager the NASA eye doctor came to me, and as my eyesight was becoming fairly bad, he said, "Hey richard, you've got bad eyesight; I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but that's going to prevent you from ever being selected...
...There are companies like Virgin Galactic now trying to open up commercial space travel right now; did you ever think to yourself, maybe I'll just wait until these are viable and save myself $30 million? I've been in this a lot longer than there's been a Virgin Galactic. Those of us who founded Space Adventures are, generally speaking, the same people who founded the X-Prize. And the X-Prize is what created the opportunity for Burt Rutan to go build SpaceShipOne, and Virgin Galactic came in and paid to have ?Virgin Galactic? painted its tail...
...lesser known detail is that many years went by before we were actually able to fund the $10 million prize for the X-Prize. When we envisioned Space Adventures and the X-Prize, we thought basically the X-Prize would get the ships built, and then Space Adventures would fly them. But without the prize being funded, and therefore no ships being built, we said look, even though NASA won't take private citizens, maybe we?ll be able to convince the Russians. So we went and we talked to the Russians and they said Yeah, well, we might consider...
...With China planning to conduct its first ever spacewalk this week and India making noise about its own space program, it almost seems as if there?s a new space race heating up. And this comes at a time when the U.S. is retiring its shuttle program and NASA's scrambling for funding; is the U.S. in danger of falling behind? There's no question that other countries are really pushing forward, fairly significantly in some cases, right at the time when the U.S. is having what I would describe as a hiccup in its continuity...