Astro-dad Watches Son Launched into Space

Owen Garriott watched his son, Richard, get launched into space today. Richard rode a Russian Soyuz rocket, a ride that reportedly cost him $30 million. Richard is a wealthy man, having created a computer game called Ultima, and then a computer game company. Richard could afford it the ticket.

Owen Garriott didn’t have that kind of money when he flew in space. He got into space the old-fashioned way: he was selected by NASA as an astronaut. He was one of six scientist-astronauts chosen in 1965. Maybe this is a good time to remember his accomplishments.

Owen’s first mission came in 1973, as a member of the second crew of Skylab, America’s first space station. The mission ran just under 60 days. Garriott had 3 space walks.

But you didn’t have to go outside to enjoy Skylab. To this day, Skylab remains the single biggest room ever in space. An astronaut could get quite a long “flight” pushing off from one end of the station and launching himself to the other end. That must have been fun!

Garriott’s second and final mission was aboard the shuttle. He flew on STS-9, which first used Spacelab, a scientific laboratory developed with the European Space Agency.

An interesting side note: Each of Owen Garriot’s flights was commanded by a moonwalker; Alan Bean (Apollo 12 moonwalker) commanded the Skylab mission; and John Young (Apollo 16 moonwalker) commanded STS-9.

NOTE: There’s a nice entry about Richard Garriott on the Discovery News blog.