The eighteenth full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-13. Yuri Lonchakov and Michael Fincke take up residence on the ISS for 199 days. Arriving with them on the ISS for a ten-day stay is space tourist and computer game mogul Richard Garriott (creator of the series of Ultima role-playing games, which feature his alter ego “Lord British” as their benevolent ruler), who returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-11 with the Expedition 16 crew. Like other “space tourists” before him, Garriott pays for his own Soyuz seat and mission training. While aboard, Garriott films Apogee Of Fear, which he later calls “the first science fiction film actually filmed in space”, with the help of his crewmates; NASA later objects to the movie when it discovers that its astronauts were recruited as actors and crew. Obviously bitten by the space acting bug, Fincke would later guest star in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.
More about the Ultima games in Phosphor Dot Fossils
More about Star Trek: Enterprise in the LogBook
