#spaceexploration – by @the_explorers_club on Instagram
Jiim Clash: When you saw Earth for the first time from space, how did it hit you?
Richard Garriott: It only takes eight and a half minutes to go from the launch pad to orbit and, as you climb, you’re looking up so all you see is darkness. You might think your first thought would be, ‘Oh look how beautiful the Earth is,’ or ‘Wow, I finally got my dream to make it into space’. The honest truth about what was in my mind first was, ‘Wow, we are not that high up.’ And my second thought was, ‘I sure hope we are in a perfectly circular orbit or this is not going to go well’. For the first few tumbles, I was trying to work out our trajectory to make sure we were going to stay in orbit. It was only after a quarter of the way around the Earth I was convinced we were really in orbit [laughs]! – –