What
do you say about a person who helped
pioneer
MMO gaming (Ultima Online), has recently
created
an exciting MMO game (Tabula Rasa), built
a
haunted house capable of terrifying even stoic
adults
(Britannia Manor), and is scheduled to make his
first
space flight in October, joining the team on the
International
Space Station? By anyone's standards,
Richard
Garriott lives large.
As the executive producer
for
the video game company NCsoft, he has added
to
his legacy in the gaming realm with the recent
release
of Tabula Rasa, which takes online players on
an
intergalactic journey of epic proportions. A certain
number
of these gamers, selected through a drawing,
will
partake of the space station voyage -- or at least
a
digital copy of their DNA will.
As part of Operation
Immortality,
the DNA sequences of a certain number
of
eternity-minded individuals will travel on a storage
device
to the space station. Who knows? If something
tragic
happens to the Earth over the next few years,
these
hand-selected souls may be reconstructed from
their
stored DNA information by some benevolent race
of
aliens passing by.
Richard
clearly enjoys capturing the imagination
and
entertaining those around him. His early interest
in
magic is one indication. Another is one of his pet
projects,
Britannia Manor, outside of Austin, Texas. How
many
people on the planet get to build a personalized
haunted
house?
My earliest career inclination (at the
age
of ten) was to become a designer of amusement
park
fun houses. This was after a visit to the walkthrough
Palace
Fun House at Asbury Park (yes, the
same
Asbury Park immortalized by Bruce Springsteen
on
his first album). Richard's similar ambitions to
delight
and terrify people were fully realized, largely
aided
by millions of sales of the Ultima video game
series, an
accomplishment
that catapulted him to millionaire
status.
The substantial profits from his entrepreneurial
ventures
also contributed to the purchase of the roundtrip
ticket,
obtained through Space Adventures, to the
International
Space Station, tagged at $30 million.
Corporate
sponsorships and commercial ventures will
help
offset the costs.
No
ordinary haunted house, the original Britannia
Manor
(which doubled as Richard's residence) sported
hazards
you might have to swim through, puzzles to
open
closed doors, secret hallways, costumed creatures
offering
talismans and clues to guide your journey, and
an
atmosphere so incredibly creepy that some adults
called
it the most frightening experience of their lives.
The
entire event, in fact, was not that different from
navigating
the levels of a video game, except the
costumed
characters were real (as were the fire, water,
and
vexing challenges). Though the original Britannia
Manor
ceased operation when the high-tech boom
went
bust (1994), Britannia Manor MK III, recently
constructed,
offers new twists and thrills, including an
observatory,
underground passages, swiveling walls
in
the guest rooms that move beds between rooms
at
night, and locks that grip your arm when you try to
open
them. This man knows how to have fun.
Richard,
the son of Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott,
will
be fulfilling a lifelong dream when he voyages
aboard
a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International
Space
Station. During the ten days living in low earth
orbit
(at an altitude of approximately 217 miles,
completing
15.77 orbits a day), he will conduct
experiments,
including growing protein crystals
which
form perfectly under zero-gravity conditions.
With
coaching
from his father and extensive astronaut training
in
both Houston and Russia, the realities of the upcoming
voyage
are converging into sharp focus. Richard has been
blogging
on his experiences. The
completion
of his personalized space suit, from a June 27, 2008
blog
entry, was something of a rite of passage.
"Big
news to start my second week of June training came
in
the shape of a freshly tailored Sokol spacesuit," Richard
wrote.
"This is quite a departure from the heavily-used
models
with which we've been training until now, not least
because
it fits, is bright white...and has my name on it!"
"While
at Energia HQ (the contractor responsible for
making
the spacesuits)," Richard continued, "I chatted with
Oleg
Fedorovich, who has made every Sokol suit since the
beginning.
Mine is Sokol #169. And I can officially attest
to
the quality of his workmanship, not least because they
made
me sit in the suit in my own seat liner for two hours...that is a long time to sit perfectly still, especially with
spots
here and there under pressure from the folds of
an
inflated spacesuit."
"However, if you're wearing one of
these
in an emergency, everything has to fit perfectly,
so
I consider those two hours time well spent to ensure
pressure
spots are as few as possible. While at Energia, I
also
tried on all my custom underlayers, including the flight
suit,
Farel survival suit, life preservers, and even the pair of
girdle-like
shorts and leggings that help keep blood in the
upper
half of your body post-flight."