Out of this world
UK adventurer sets astonishing record, travelling to space, both poles and ocean’s deepest trench
a BRITISH explorer has become the first person to visit Earth’s four furthest extremes after diving to the deepest point on the planet.
Richard Garriott emerged from the 36,000ft depths of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific ocean yesterday after spending 12 hours in a deep sea vehicle.
It adds to a list of achievements that have seen him trek to the South Pole in 1998, spend ten days in orbit on the International Space Station in 2008 and go to the North Pole in 2018.
His latest escapade saw the multi-millionaire video game developer, 59, land at the foot of Challenger Deep, the lowest known point in the world’s oceans. He was aboard the £26million deep sea vehicle Limiting factor, piloted by fellow adventurer Victor Vescovo, who was making his ninth dive into the abyss.
The titanium-shelled vehicle can withstand the crushing pressure at such a depth which is equal to 100 elephants standing on a human head.
from the expedition ship Pressure Drop Mr Garriott said: ‘I’ve been to the bottom of the Earth – you can’t go deeper than that. It was a descent into darkness in the truest sense.
‘Even though it’s a four-hour journey to the bottom, you are going down fast. at the bottom I saw his monstrously long cable [left by a previous expedition] littering the seafloor. That was very sad.
‘There was a variety of small lifeforms, small sea cucumberrelated creatures and translucent creatures like flatworms.’
The trip was undertaken in the name of science, looking for organisms which can survive the harshest of conditions.
Working with education charity the Ideas foundation, Mr Garriott hopes to inspire future generations to become explorers. The married father-of-two took photos and made a short film for children – just as he did on the International Space Station. That trip saw him become the sixth space tourist, paying an estimated £21million to take off from Kazakhstan on a Soyuz TMa-13 spacecraft.
Mr Garriott, born in Cambridge but brought up in the US, said of his travels: ‘I find those moments to be awe-inspiring in the truest sense of awe.’