Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 8:46 pm

EVERYONE here needs to see this documentary. You can find it on Netflix streaming.

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Mission-Richa ... +a+mission

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 11:37 pm

Oh and make sure you watch the credits, or you'll miss his hilarious explanation of what it's like to use a zero G toilet.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 10:06 pm

You're making me consider getting a Netflix account.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:59 am

This documentary is awesome. He got permission to have a film crew follow his training for a year, and he himself carried a camera on the mission to document it. He also brought along experiments from his space foundation, and experimented on himself since he's the first person in space with lasix eye surgery.

The documentary does some background on him. While I knew who Richard Garriott was (for those who don't, he's "Lord British" the author of all the Ultima games), I never knew much about him.

Amazingly, his first game was written when he was a high school senior, and working part time at a Computer Land store. At $5 a pop, selling them in plastic baggies, that first game made him $150K, which he invested wisely (with guidance from his Dad) in the aerospace industry.

In the documentary he boots up his actual first Apple II (it still runs!) and fires up a copy of his first game. How cool is that?

Interestingly, his father Owen was an astronaut in the Skylab and Shuttle era. He was the astronaut that took a ham radio station with him on the shuttle. There's a lot of cool footage of his father from Skylab. His father is currently involved with his space foundation.

Richard Garriott was the founder and major contributor of the XPrize foundation, and he's a major investor in Space Adventures.