Richard Garriott (Lord British), the creator of the Ultima series of computer role playing games, is currently whizzing above our heads as the world’s latest space tourist.

I wanted to write a witty post about it, including a screenshot of part of Ultima I where your fantasy hero pilots a spaceship.  But, Chris the Artful Gamer beat me to it.  His post “Ultima creator Richard Garriott Preparing to go to Space, possibly to destroy Minax” has some handy info about Garriott’s trip, including a link to a site Garriott set up just for the trip, and notes on who’s financing it.

He also made the exact same joke I was going to make:

This is all well and good, but crucial questions remain: Where will Richard find enough Tri-Lithium to power the rocket? Will he find Planet X and Father Antos?

(if you got that joke, you are truly truly geeky)

As I expected, Space Politics had the details on that $3 million “overhead projector” McCain mentioned in last night’s debate.

They quote Obama’s senate web site, which says:

One of its most popular attractions and teaching tools at the Adler Planetarium is the Sky Theater. The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience.

If they’ve kept the current projector running for 40 years, and they only want to replace it because they can’t get parts, I’d say it’s about time it was replaced. $3million every 40 years is a great deal.

I’d really like to be in Florida right now.  The space shuttle Endeavour is now sitting on pad 39b, which was officially retired from shuttle operations and handed over to the Constellation project in 2007.  Why is it there?  Things could get kind of hairy in a couple of weeks.

Barring further delays, Atlantis should be rolling out to pad 39a this weekend, for the STS-125 mission.  This is the last mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.  The crew will be upgrading the instruments and installing a coupler allowing an unmanned craft to de-orbit it in a few years.  Hubble is in a pretty high orbit, though, and NASA hasn’t had a shuttle that far from the International Space Station since the Colombia accident.  If anything were to happen to Atlantis on its way into space, like the damage to Columbia’s wing, the crew would be stranded.  They couldn’t return to Earth, and they wouldn’t be able to get to the ISS and chill there for a while.

Endeavour is currently configured as STS-400, a number assigned to show that this mission is completely outside the scope of normal shuttle operations.  In the event something tragic happens, Endeavour’s crew will become a rescue crew.  The current STS-400 plan sounds like something out of MacGuyver.

Atlantis and Endeavour would extend their robotic arms, and Endeavour’s would grab its counterpart.  The Endeavour crew would then throw a rope over to Atlantis, and they’d string it as a tether between the shuttles.  The Atlantis crew would make their way over the rope to Endeavour, hitching a ride home.  Atlantis itself would be de-orbited from the ground, with the debris landing north of Hawaii.

But, that’s probably not going to happen.  Assuming everything goes as planned, Endeavour will get prepped for STS-126, and will launch from pad 39a as usual.

For the next few weeks, there will be two shuttles sitting on their launch pads together.  I don’t know if that’s ever happened before.  Security must be really tight at Launch Complex 39 right now.  But, boy, would I love to see that.