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Lord British on Personal Spaceflight

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

FleaPlus writes "The Space Review has an interview with Richard Garriott (aka "Lord British"), best known as the creator of the genre-defining Ultima series of role playing games. In the interview he talks about his current work as the vice chairman of Space Adventures, and his thoughts on private-sector spaceflight in general. It includes an anecdote about how he funded the initial Russian studies which opened the door for Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, and Gregory Olsen's flights to the International Space Station, but was unable to go himself after the late-90s stock market bubble burst."

2 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Inevitable Ultima Comments by buckhead_buddy · · Score: 4, Informative
    First, I think the interview attributes spaceflight as part of the wrong Ultima. Ultima III has "underwater" activity, but it's Ultima ][ that uses the Russian rocket program and has the reference to his dad Owen Garriot looking for his shuttle. Ultima I has a small bit of space flight in shuttles. And of course someone will mention the crashed alien spacecraft in a farmer's field in the later Ultima, but that has even less to do plot wise other than being an in-joke about another Origin title.

    Richard Garriot has always been a hero of mine for his ability to make a cool game, feed his family, and pay for his computer education with his series of Ultima titles. Probably most others don't share this perspective. But even though I do regret the consumption of Ultima into nothing more than yet another corporate brand of Electronic Arts, I do have a small bit of nostalgia for the guy who created it even if the modern game does nothing for me today.

    It is cool to see someone spending their dot com bubble money on things other than fancy cars.

  2. Re:Gotta Love the Russians! by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 4, Informative
    To me it's more evidence that NASA is a fossilised bueuracracy. Of course the Russians being strapped for funds have a great motivator to be open minded, but still. That's sort of the point: if NASA was forced to operate with less lavish budgets, new possibilites might suddenly "appear".

    Read the CAIB Report, specifically Volume 1, Chapter 5 Section 5.3 entittled "An Agency Trying to do Too Much with Too Little." The Board found problems with NASA... beurocracy is certainly a large part of it. A lavish budget is not.