Noah flipped out. “You mean Lord British?!” Noah played Ultima back in the day.

Richard Garriott was the sixth private space explorer – apparently NASA carefully guards who can be called an “astronaut.” Garriott’s father was an astronaut, and growing up his family lived in a suburb where everyone’s dad was an astronaut. Garriott’s eyesight wasn’t perfect, so he was summarily disqualified from NASA at a young age. Many years later he used his Ultima fortune to hitch a ride to space with the Russians. There’s a good Wired article about it here.

We’re excited to have Garriott as our officiant because we hear he loves Dungeons and Dragons. (Noah is upset that our wedding is interfering with our Tuesday night gaming sessions.) We’ve also heard some wild rumors about Garriott from our Texan friends. For example, we heard Garriott built a hobbit village for his friends as a kid, and that he has a guest house that’s only opened at Halloween as a haunted house. The Wired article linked to above mentions that Garriott’s mansion has secret passages. Awesome.

In all seriousness, Noah and I are throwing a lot of money at our crazy wedding because private space travel is a cause we really believe in. We really think the future is space, and that private citizens ought to be able to travel there. We want to promote space travel as a positive thing. Basically we agree with this organization’s vision.

Garriott is scheduled to be a guest speaker at the Space Business Forum next week in New York City.