Billionaire Space Tourists

So why not go for real?

Garriott says he began funding space tourism research in the 1990s, hoping to be the first private citizen in orbit. In 2000, he teamed up with Virginia-based Space Adventures after meeting Chief Executive Eric Anderson at an Explorers Club gala. Currently a Space Adventures board member, he's also a trustee of the X Prize, a nonprofit organization that awards big prizes to inventors in hopes of spurring innovation. Other X Prize trustees include Google co-founder, Larry Page. "There's an astonishing overlap between high-tech entrepreneurs and people interested in privatization of space," Garriott says. "Branson, Bezos, Elon Musk, the Google guys--we all know each other."

The collapse of the dot-com bubble drained Garriott's fortune--enough, he says, that he didn't feel comfortable paying out $20 million, the going price in 2000 for a spaceflight. Space Adventures sold Garriott's spot on its waiting list to multimillionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first space tourist in April 2001.

After rebuilding his wealth with his gaming business and clearing his schedule, Garriott last year signed on again for another flight. Assuming all goes according to plan, he is slated to lift off from Kazakhstan aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TMA-13 on Oct. 12. Garriott is scheduled to spend 10 to 14 days on the International Space Station with four other people, including second-generation Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov and NASA astronaut, Michael Fincke.

Tickets aren't cheap, now at $30 million apiece. Garriott says that he will pay some portion out of his own pocket and is seeking corporate sponsorship to cover the rest of the bill. One company that will help him out: Huntsville, Ala.-based ExtremoZyme, which develops enzymes for research and industrial application. Owen Garriott was one of ExtremoZyme's founders; Richard is an investor.

To prepare for the flight, Garriott is logging time in Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center and at NASA's Johnson Space Center, which houses a mockup of the space station. There will also be a stint in the Black Sea for survival training. He's already completed "centrifuge runs" at Brooks Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, to simulate the body's reaction to re-entering the earth's atmosphere.