Space tourist not afraid of Soyuz bumpy landing

By Chris Baldwin

STAR CITY, Russia (Reuters) - A Texan 'space tourist' said on Tuesday he was undaunted by two previous jolting re-entries by Russia's Soyuz capsule and was looking forward to conducting his own science experiments in space.

In April a South Korean 'space tourist' said she feared death when her Soyuz capsule re-entered the atmosphere at the wrong angle, exposing the crew to huge gravitational forces and incinerating parts of the module.

Richard Garriott, a video game developer from Austin, Texas, will pay a reported $35 million (18.9 million pounds) to fly into space next month with a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the International Space Station.

After 10 days in space Garriott, whose father is a retired NASA astronaut, will return to Earth with the ISS's old crew aboard a Soyuz re-entry vehicle, a three-man capsule which has malfunctioned on its last two flights.

In April, a Soyuz capsule landed about 420km (260 miles) off course in the Kazakh steppe after explosive bolts failed to detonate ahead of re-entry, sending the craft into a steep descent. Last year, a Soyuz capsule carrying Malaysia's first astronaut also made a so-called "ballistic" landing, similarly blamed on faulty bolts.

WELL PREPARED

"I personally don't think of a ballistic entry as a problem. It is not a particularly abnormal form of re-entry," Garriott said at a press conference at Russia's Gagarin cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow.

Results of an investigation by Russia's Federal Space Agency into the landings were not made public, but officials said there were no further problems and Soyuz would perform "like clockwork."