CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -
The world's latest space tourist, a computer game wizard and astronaut's son
who paid $30 million to fly to the space station, said Monday from orbit that
he's gotten his money's worth.
With his 12-day adventure
winding down this week, Richard
Garriott said he felt fulfilled even before he
rocketed away on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Oct. 12, thanks to all the
training he got with astronauts and other space professionals.
"Of course, it's been
great icing on the cake to actually take the rocket ride, which was very
exciting, and, of course, the view from up here is spectacular," he told
reporters in a news conference.
Garriott said it's been
especially gratifying speaking from space with his father, retired
astronaut Owen Garriott, 77, who flew on NASA's first space station,
Skylab, in 1973. The younger Garriott is the first American to follow a parent
into space.
The two have chatted
several times each day by radio hookup arranged by Russian Mission Control
outside Moscow. Their next conversation will be face-to-face at the Soyuz
landing site in Kazakhstan on Friday.
"That's been a real
joy, not just talking to him here from space, but this whole year we've
actually spent working together for this flight," said the 47-year-old
Garriott. "It's been a great opportunity for us to bond, so to speak, as
adults in ways that we haven't had a chance to do in many years."
Garriott, who lives in
Austin, Texas, and goes by the gaming moniker "Lord British," is the
creator of the Ultima computer game series. His most recent business with
brother Robert, Destination Games, merged with a South Korean gaming giant,
NCsoft. Garriott is an executive producer of the American branch, NCsoft
Austin.
Back at NASA's Florida
launching site, meanwhile, attention was focused Monday on a mission that has
been delayed. Space shuttle Atlantis was hauled off the launch pad and sent
back to the hangar to wait until at least February for a trip to the Hubble
Space Telescope.
Atlantis was originally
scheduled to blast off this month on a mission to make various repairs and
upgrade the telescope. But the Hubble broke down three weeks ago and stopped
sending pictures, forcing NASA to figure out what went wrong and delay its
mission until next year.
Now astronauts will need
time to train for a new telescope repair they hadn't planned on.
Shuttle Endeavour, now at
the front of the flight lineup, will be moved from its launch pad to Atlantis'
spot this weekend. Endeavour had been poised to blast off as a rescue ship for
Atlantis' crew if there was an emergency during the Hubble mission. Instead,
Endeavour will carry seven astronauts to the space station on an equipment
delivery mission; launch is targeted for Nov. 14.
That trip will enable NASA
to double the number of astronauts living at the orbiting outpost, from three
to six. That transition should occur next spring.
Space station astronaut
Gregory Chamitoff said Monday it feels "very productive" to have
double the number on board. He'd been living with two Russian cosmonauts since
the beginning of June and welcomed the arrival of three new faces one week ago.
Later this week, those two cosmonauts and Garriott will return to Earth and
leave Chamitoff, fellow NASA astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian Yuri
Lonchakov behind in orbit.
"We've gone for 4½
months, the three of us, and it's very exciting to have a full complement up
here," said Chamitoff, who will come home aboard Endeavour.
The 18-year-old Hubble,
meanwhile, has been unable
to send back pictures of the cosmos since Sept. 27. Flight controllers
tried unsuccessfully to get a backup system working last week, and may make
another attempt later this week.
When they do fly, the
Hubble repair crew members will take up a replacement part for the disabled
system.
Richard
Garriott is chronicling his spaceflight training and mission at his personal
Web site: www.richardinspace.com.
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