ISS Fan Club

America's next space tourist and a new space station crew are gearing up for an October launch to the International Space Station (ISS).

Computer game developer Richard Garriott, along with U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov are slated to launch Oct. 12 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport.

Garriott, the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who flew aboard the U.S. Skylab station and a U.S. shuttle, is set to become the first second-generation U.S. spaceflyer. He is flying under a $30 million deal brokered with Russia's Federal Space Agency by the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures to visit the ISS for about a week.

"To be frank this price tag is the majority of my wealth, to be honest," Garriott said Wednesday at a NASA briefing in Houston. "The reason why it's worth that to me is that this is the goal I've been working toward for a significant portion of my adult life."

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080730-exp18-garriott.html