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Tuesday September 23, 11:53 PMSpace tourist not afraid of Soyuz bumpy landingSTAR CITY, Russia (Reuters) - A Texan 'space tourist' said on Tuesday he was undaunted by two previous jolting re-entries by Russia's Soyuz capsule and was looking forward to conducting his own science experiments in space.In April a South Korean 'space tourist' said she feared death when her Soyuz capsule re-entered the atmosphere at the wrong angle, exposing the crew to huge gravitational forces and incinerating parts of the module. Richard Garriott, a video game developer from Austin, Texas, will pay a reported $35 million (18.9 million pounds) to fly into space next month with a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the International Space Station. After 10 days in space Garriott, whose father is a retired NASA astronaut, will return to Earth with the ISS's old crew aboard a Soyuz re-entry vehicle, a three-man capsule which has malfunctioned on its last two flights. In April, a Soyuz capsule landed about 420km (260 miles) off course in the Kazakh steppe after explosive bolts failed to detonate ahead of re-entry, sending the craft into a steep descent. Last year, a Soyuz capsule carrying Malaysia's first astronaut also made a so-called "ballistic" landing, similarly blamed on faulty bolts. WELL PREPARED "I personally don't think of a ballistic entry as a problem. It is not a particularly abnormal form of re-entry," Garriott said at a press conference at Russia's Gagarin cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow. Results of an investigation by Russia's Federal Space Agency into the landings were not made public, but officials said there were no further problems and Soyuz would perform "like clockwork." Garriott also downplayed the risks. "I am convinced the probability of a ballistic landing in my case is significantly reduced, but if it were to occur I am physically and mentally well-prepared for it," he said. Garriott said a NASA doctor told him his poor eyesight meant he was ineligible for the U.S. space programme. He said he would conduct private scientific experiments and take photos of environmental changes on his trip. "We data mined the Skylab photo files from the 1970s to find important places on the surface of the Earth that I might photograph from space that will showcase how the Earth has changed in one generation of space flight." He said his father Owen had sage advice: "Make sure you take time to just sit at the window and take a look at the view, because it's mighty spectacular." (Reporting by Chris Baldwin, editing by Opheera McDoom) |
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