Sunday, October 12, 2008

Second Generation in Space

Leaving behind all the grim news on earth, Richard Garriott is on his way to outer space today, the first man to follow his father into orbit, a happy reminder that mankind has made progress in some fields over the past half-century.

Garriott, a 47-year-old computer game entrepreneur, departed this morning on a Soyuz spacecraft with two Americans and a Russian from Kazakhstan en route to the international space station for 10 days of conducting experiments and photographing Earth to measure changes since his father took pictures from the US Skylab in 1973.

Watching his son go into orbit, Owen Garriott was "elated" to see him in the company of cosmonaut Segei Volkov, whose father also traveled to space.

As American and Russian politicians on earth keep bickering over Georgia and nuclear missile defenses, it's heartening to see a couple of their compatriots rising above it all.

Happy landings, comrades.

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