Gaming Mogul to Blast Off on Russian Rocket

Oct. 10, 2008 -- After earning millions of dollars creating computer fantasy games, Richard Garriott decided to fulfill a childhood dream of his own by flying into space aboard a Russian rocket.

"I have been working for decades on this," Garriott said in the Baikonur Soviet-era space base in the dusty steppes of Kazakhstan, where he is to blast off Sunday aboard a Soyuz rocket for the International Space Station (ISS).

But unlike the five space tourists who came before him, Garriott views space as a family business: He is the son of astronaut Owen Garriott, who in 1973 spent two months aboard Skylab, the first orbiting space station.

"I grew up in a family of astronauts and I always wanted to do what my father did," said Garriott, a balding, goateed 47-year-old who was born in Cambridge, England, and grew up Houston, Tex.

The young Garriott -- a computer whiz-kid who wrote games for fun -- was dubbed "Lord British" by his classmates because of what they perceived as his English accent.

Related Content:

In the 1980s, "Lord British" became the name of the ruler of an alternative fantasy world that Garriott created for Ultima, a series of role-playing games initially written for the now-ancient Apple II computer.

The series, which became a runaway hit and later spawned an Internet version called Ultima Online, cemented Garriott's reputation as a pioneering game designer and turned him into a multi-millionaire.

In September 2007, Space Adventures, a U.S.-based company that specialises in taking wealthy tourists into orbit, announced Garriott would be its next space tourist, following a flight that year by Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi.