Garriott’s company not funding space flight

When Space Adventures announced that Richard Garriott going to fly to the ISS next October and with some commercial sponsors, some wondered whether his employer, Korean computer gaming company NCSoft, would be helping pay for the trip. Not so, the company told the Korea Times on Monday. “It is a personal affair (of Garriott). We decided not to participate in the program,” a company spokesperson told the newspaper. There had been speculation that Garriott would use the trip to help promote the company’s online games, perhaps playing them while on the station. He could still do that, of course (communications issues permitting), but it would seem that there would be a lot more interesting things to do on the ISS than play computer games…