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Game Developer Richard Garriott, the man responsible for the Ultima Online series as well as the more recent Tabula Rasa MMORPG, is gearing up to become the sixth paying visitor to the International Space Station.
Since this isn't your everyday, ordinary kind of trip, it also carries with it an equally astronomical fare: Garriott is paying around US$ 30 million for the ISS trip. That should probably be the magic number Lance Bass has to target if he ever wants to finally be able to go to space.
Anyway, Garriott seems to be in high spirits about the trip itself, commenting that he expects everything to go smoothly. This could be because the man's father himself, former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, is serving as the chief scientist for the upcoming flight. Garriott has also had some amount of training during his zero-G trip with physicist Stephen Hawking.
Garriot's spaceflight is being handled by Russia's Federal Space Agency and the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures. The developer will be flying with ISS Expedition 18 and is planning to spend nine days aboard the ISS. Garriott's spaceflight is expected to commence in Fall 2008.
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