VentureBeat Interviews Richard Garriott
Guys! Guys! You’ll never guess!
Richard Garriott has been interviewed again, this time by VentureBeat (well, actually, GamesBeat, one of their sub-groups). Naturally, it’s prefaced with a look at Garriott’s recently released documentary, Man on a Mission.
Richard Garriott is best known as Lord British, the designer of video games that have been enjoyed by tens of millions of people over the past three decades. But thanks to the documentary film Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott’s Road to the Stars, he is also now known as a pioneer in commercial space travel who paid about $30 million for a trip to the International Space Station.
The story shows how Garriott dreamed of following his father into space, only to be stymied by NASA’s restriction on prohibiting anyone with eyesight flaws requiring glasses from being an astronaut. At 13, with his hopes dashed, Garriott started plotting how to launch his own trip into space as a civilian. His entrepreneurial approach to space travel eventually paid off with the trip of a lifetime in 2008.
And, indeed, much of the interview is about Garriott’s experiences in space.
GB: So was space as much fun as you expected it to be?
Garriott: Of course! But what’s interesting is…It was in very different ways than what I would have guessed. For example, launch you think of as this loud, shaky, scary moment. In fact, on a liquid-fueled rocket like the Soyuz, it’s almost perfectly silent and smooth on the inside. It’s much more cerebral, it feels much more like a ballet move, lifting you ever faster into the sky, than it does a sports car dropping the clutch at a green light. And the same thing’s true for re-entry. Also very smooth, and almost perfectly silent, even as you plunge into the atmosphere and create a plasma hotter than the surface of the sun that’s melting the vehicle around you. Out the window is a pretty surreal visual of the vehicle melting away, it?s only four inches from your shoulder. But it?s very smooth, very calm, not remotely scary, really.
However, by the third page of the interview, the discussion just manages touch on Garriott’s other passion, game design…
GB: So you plan to go up some more still?
Garriott: I might just sit up in my window in orbit and write the next game.
…before plunging right back into a discussion about space travel, private space travel, and the experience of being in space.
Which isn’t to say it’s not an interesting read, Dragons and Dragonettes, especially when the discussion veers into an analysis of the differences between Russia and the US at various levels (technical, social, etc.). Give it a read, if you have the time!
“private space travel, and the experience of being in space.”
When I first read that I thought it said “pirate space travel”. Bet Garriott’s thoughts on that would have been something.
Considering the number of interviews being given, it seems to me that unless he was making unusually strategic choices with his media outlets and appearances (or perhaps in this case counterintuitively so) that he would be willing to give an interview on Aiera, hopefully with Withstand the Fury Dragon interviewing.
If so I propose that all the questions be related to Ultima short of topics he begins discussing on his own. The topic should always return to Ultima or his life surrounding it, and in a way that might give him pause to speak between the lines of the series. Stuff he doesn’t normally say to anyone, but he may have been thinking during development (teenage years to present). Unless he says something about it, I wouldn’t mention EA at all. Just stick to the games and the thoughts behind and between them. Personal stuff too like where he went on vacation in his youth, nothing too charged or too crazy unless he volunteers it.
While I’ve seen a couple possible Garriott haters posting occasionally around here (permanent trip to Mars comes to mind), I think if he can’t trust us to keep the faith then he’s got a hell of a tight-knit inner circle. We’re the grunts in the trenches helping to fuel his legacy.
LOL I read “pirate space travel” too.
I don’t think there’s hate for Garriott in comments like the one about him taking that one-way trip — scorn perhaps, not hate. Garriott comes across as out-of-touch. He talks about space tourism when the global economy is in the crapper; sort of like how Newt Gingrich gets ridiculed for his lunar colony remarks. Who would space tourism benefit? The very wealthy would benefit in terms of recreation and exploitation. It’s like he’s slumming with the rest of us, talking of grandiose things that most of us might never be able to experience. And what does he offer us? A future game helping to fund his dream, his vision, his super-rich clientele’s jollies — sort of like the way the online poker game on Portalarium works as a cash magnet to fund a poker game for Ultima fans (Ultimate RPG game) which, in turn, funds his space tourism business.
Many actual problems exist in this world that could be alleviated with those millions of dollars in terms of creating opportunities through science, education, medical advancement, social change — dollars we, the gamers, the Ultima aficionados would ultimately fund, but he wants to put those towards a space theme park that, realistically speaking, only the wealthy could enjoy. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with what he wants, how he invests, or hopes to achieve for humanity. There are just bigger, more serious, pressing problems here on Earth and in many ways he does come across as out-of-touch as his alter ego if one thinks about it.
Oh come on man. He’s just doing it so he can chase satan into outter space and relieve the world of lucifer’s influence ;P. He’s doing what he wants to do. How are you trying to solve the world’s problems? Is he supposed to take the money he’s earned and -give- it to the poor of the world, otherwise he’s a fat cat that’s not helping anyone.
I have never expected a mission of humanitarianism from RG. He’s not a ceo for a bank or throwing money at lobbyists to push bills through congress. He’s simply a game designer that loves exploration, and his ultimate goal is space travel for all.
Like ocean travel 500-1000 years ago, space travel is something for the government to do or for the super rich. we won’t so janitors taking vacations on the space shuttle over night. It has to start somewhere. RG is just a cog in the machine of society. We all have our parts to play, RG is playing his part, as the son of an astronaut, to bring space travel to the masses.
Speaking of Newt Gingrich, the knife in the throat of the U.S. is the disdain shown for Ron Paul by the candidates vying for the Republican nomination. The U.S. is a rich old lady accustomed to having her way but got hooked on meth, is ruining her life and doesn’t quite realize it yet.
Richard Garriott is out of touch. Most people are. We’re egocentric, clinging to the mythos of empathy like a dream from childhood. We no longer interact because we’re social animals. We’re compelled to by our cultural and societal structures which make it easier to integrate by “earning a living”. Anyone who has had wealth for a good amount of time automatically separates themselves from most people, intentionally.
As far as private and public resources being better spent elsewhere, that is mostly true. Space represents our only real hope for the long term continuation of the species. The problem is that the species is seriously biologically and culturally flawed, and as such will probably not achieve interstellar travel before extinction. Basically, even if we can figure out how to spread to other stars, we’ll be killed before we actually do it. Accepting that the world currently operates on a level akin to Ultimate Evil, I don’t think government, religion or knowledge can really stop it. It’s like watching someone dying of lung cancer whose only concern is to keep smoking his cigarette, coughing until it falls from between his fingers, blood comes out of his mouth and he starts twitching.
In any case, let’s bring on Apogee of Fear and hope it’s not about Commander Keen ripping out of a cosmonaut’s uniform and crawling into an electrical panel, only to birth Duke Nuk’em.
Gee, I’m getting a destinctly warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside.
Glad I could be of service. Inducing warm and fuzzy feelings is my specialty. 🙂