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The Son in Orbit

Richard Garriott reflects on his visit to the International Space Station and on growing up with an astronaut dad

02 Jun 2009

Photo of U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott

Photo: AP Photo/ Mikhail Metzel

U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott gestures before the final test in a mock-up of a Soyuz TMA space craft in Star City outside Moscow on Friday, Sept. 19, 2008. U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott, Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, and U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke are scheduled to start for the International Space Station on Oct. 12. (AP Photo/ Mikhail Metzel)
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REF: JSC-SL3-111-1519_ (MIX FILE) Skylab03 Onboard Phgoto: Garriott,Owen Eating,7/28/73
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Richard Garriott, left, an American computer game designer who paid some $30 million for a 10-day stay on the space station, shakes hands with his father, Owen, 77, a NASA astronaut who visited America's first space station, Skylab, in 1973, shortly after Richard's landing in a Soyuz space capsule near Arkalyk, in north-central Kazakhstan, early Friday, Oct. 24, 2008.The capsule carrying a Russian-American crew touched down on target in Kazakhstan on Friday after a descent from the international space station, safely delivering the first two men to follow their fathers into space. (AP Photo/Sergei Remezov, POOL)
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type:slideshow mars space flight

James Oberg is a retired "rocket scientist" in Texas, after a 20+ year career in NASA Mission Control and subsequently an on-air space consultant for ABC News and then NBC News. The author of a dozen books and hundreds of magazine articles on the past, present, and potential future of space exploration, he has reported from space launch and operations centers across the United States and Russia and North Korea.

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