As he was speaking about his Soyuz-to-ISS space flight at NASA last night, I was having a strange déjà vu moment. There was something about his appearance, and that unusual necklace that seemed oddly familiar.
Then I realized that we met once before, about 30 years ago, at another NASA facility. He was “Lord British”, the cool cat that created Ultima. I had to ask if he was the same guy. Sure enough, he also grew up in Texas and visited the summer camp at the Johnson Space Center where I was a boy giving a talk on parsecs and the parallax method of using the Earth’s orbit to determine the distance to the stars. My cousin also visited from Canada (perhaps he can remember the year). I remember being impressed by Ultima on the Apple ][ and the adventurous spunk of this young Lord, and went off to spend more time programming games than looking to the stars.
And sure enough, he remembered the visit and was wearing the same necklace at the time. Since he was 11-years old, he has only removed it for his space launch, at the irritating insistence of the Russians.
Tonight, he is pre-screening his new movie, Man on a Mission. I’ll post more photos below, and why he would not fly on the Shuttle, even if it was free. Here’s his longer video intro, and space site.
And today, his 
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