Son of an Astronaut

October 15, 2008

Floating in space as we speak are two NASA astronauts, Greg Chamitoff and Mike Fincke; three Russian cosmonauts, Sergei Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Yuri Lonchakov; and one video-gamer known to millions as Lord British and General British. His real name is Richard Garriott.

Garriott is 47 years old, lives with his girlfriend, has a pierced ear and a wears a silver serpent necklace he made as a child. He created an entire pictographic language for his last computer game, which he named Tabula Rasa -- Latin for "blank slate" -- in reference to the concept that individuals acquire knowledge entirely from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world, as opposed to inherited content.

If Garriott didn't personally believe that, he'd never be in space today. For when he was a kid, some of the best doctors in the world -- the ones on staff at NASA -- told him he couldn't be an astronaut like dear old dad. Bad eyes, they said. Young Garriott decided he'd have to make his own way. And so he did.
The path was not what you'd recommend to your kids: Spend hours playing computer games, drop out of school, don't worry about marriage and children, etc., etc.

Yet Garriott did follow the single most important piece of advice you hear over and over from astronauts today: Do what you love. For Garriott, his passion for role-playing games led to a lucrative business that enabled him to spend $35 million for a 10-day trip to space. I don't know what it costs to develop a computer game, but I'd be surprised if Garriott's adventure isn't incorporated in some way into his next virtual world.

(Top: Richard Garriott stashes a chamber used to grow exotic protein crystals in space. Credit: Space Adventures for Discovery.com; Left: Garriott and his crewmates before launch in Russia; the trio as they board their rocket for blastoff. Credit: Victor Zelentsov and Bill Ingalls for NASA)

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