Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Incredible voyage from space to the bottom of the sea
A BRITISH-BORN explorer who has been out of this world on the space station is about to dive to the deepest point on Earth.
Richard Garriott will become just the 14th person alive to venture into the dark depths of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
And he is giving the children of Daily Mirror readers a chance to be part of his amazing journey to the bottom of the world.
He wants to take pictures drawn by them with him in his submersible, which will descend to the Trench’s deepest point – Challenger Deep – at 11,035m below sea level.
It is all part of Richard’s dream of inspiring youngsters to think about how best to protect the planet.
The ocean adventure off Guam, in the Far East, will make an impressive double for Richard, who flew to the International Space Station in 2008.
Richard, 59, fulfilled a final wish of Star Trek legend James “Scotty” Doohan, who died in 2005, by smuggling his ashes on to the ISS. He has also taken physicist Stephen Hawking on a zero gravity flight, been to both Poles and to the wreck of the Titanic.
He said: “Later this month, I’m going to the deepest part of the planet and I’m very excited about it.
“And I’m really pleased I will be taking pictures drawn by Mirror readers to the deepest place on Earth.”
For his 12-hour trip, Cambridgeborn Richard will wear the same suit – with the union jack and the stars and stripes – that he wore into space.
Descending seven miles and ascending takes eight hours and he will spend four hours doing research and collecting microbes and fish “which have never been seen before”.
All data collected will be put into the public domain for free.
He said the dive will be a very different experience to the view of Earth from space.
“There is something called the overview effect which is a lifechanging experience most people who orbit the Earth have had and I have too.
“The view from a port-hole viewport from the submersible will only
I’m pleased to take pictures from Mirror readers to the deepest spot on Earth RICHARD GARRIOTT ON UNIQUE TREAT FOR READERS
be as far as the lighting will provide you. It’ll be like looking at the moon but when you’re only 10ft above the surface – just looking at the rocks and bumps and dust, not the big picture of the whole thing.”
Richard, who explored the Titanic
wreck site in 1998, is the son of an astronaut and hopes his children, Kinga, aged eight, and Ronin, six, will follow in his footsteps.
He said: “I’ve made them watch the launches.”
In 2007, he took disabled physics genius Hawking on a zero gravity flight in Florida. Richard, who was 10,000 11,035 born a few streets from where Hawking lived, said: “It was incredible. Our mantra for the day was: ‘We can’t kill Stephen Hawking!’ But he loved it. We ended up doing 10 parabolas.”
When video game developer Richard, who lives in New York with
GOING DEEP Submersible to be used for venture
Challenger Deep 11,035 metres below sea level wife Laetitia, took some of Doohan’s ashes into space, they were attached to three business cards. He brought one back for the late star’s son and put the second outside the hatch of the Soyuz descent module, so Scotty could have a spacewalk.
The third remains aboard the ISS.
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