This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
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hamstation .com. Good evening, everybody. It's
time for another episode of Ham Talk Live. It's
episode number 49. Ham radio from space with
Richard Garriott, the Caillou W5KWQ recorded
live on Thursday, January 26th, 2017. I'm your
host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in
to this episode of Ham Talk Live. Tonight we'll
be joined by Richard Garriott, W5KWQ. He'll be
taking your questions about ham radio from space
and his new book entitled, Explore and Create.
We'll take your calls live in just a few minutes.
Last week, Karl Luselschwaab, K9LA, was here
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We're on the air every Thursday night at 9 p
.m. eastern time at HamTalkLive .com and if you
missed the show you can listen to the archive
on the website or you can download it for most
popular podcasting sites. Richard Gary at W5KWQ
is a founding father of the video game industry
and commercial spaceflight industry, a flown
astronaut and an accomplished explorer. He's
been inducted into the Computer Gaming Hall of
Fame and has received the Industry Lifetime Achievement
Award. He is credited with creating the now ubiquitous
term Avatar, and among the gaming community he
is known as Lord British. He authored the acclaimed
Ultima series and has built three leading game
companies, Origin Systems, which was sold to
Electronic Arts, Destination Games, which was
sold to NCSoft, and Portalarium, where he is
building Shroud of the Avatar, a successor to
his previous works. As a principal shaper of
the commercial spaceflight industry. He co -founded
Space Adventures, the only company to arrange
space flights for private citizens and is the
sixth private astronaut to live aboard the International
Space Station. The son of a NASA astronaut, Owen
W -5LFL, Richard became the first second generation
astronaut and has been a key leader in civilian
and commercial space as an investor and board
member of institutions such as the XPRIZE Foundation,
Space Adventures and Planetary Resources. Richard
is an avid explorer having traveled around the
globe from the jungles of the Amazon to the South
Pole, the deep seas of the Titanic, and hydrothermal
vents to orbiting the Earth above the Earth at
the International Space Station. His non -profit
and philanthropic efforts include serving on
the boards of the Explorers Club and the Challenger
Center for Science Education. Richard lives with
his wife, Letitia, also an entrepreneur and their
two children, Kinga Swong and Ronan Fee. I hope
I got that right. His new book, Explore Create,
chronicles his life from the early days of video
gaming through his space flight and to the present
day. So Richard, thank you so much for coming
on HamTalk Live tonight. Absolutely, my pleasure.
Great to be with you. And boy, it's not often
I hear somebody read the whole bio. I've had
a lot of fun in my life, as you can tell. Yeah,
certainly. You've had a great batch of experiences.
And tonight, we want to focus on your trip to
the International Space Station. And I know you
could talk about this for... weeks on end. Uh,
and we don't have that long. We have 45 minutes
and they cut me off. So, uh, so tell us a little
bit about the trip and maybe focus more on, you
know, how ham radio played a role in that. Sure.
Sure. Of course. Uh, you know, you, you mentioned
my father, uh, W five LFL. Um, you know, when
I, when I was a young, let me, let me back up
from the space flight and kind of introduce,
uh, my journey through him as well. You know,
my father, before he became an astronaut, he
and my grandfather, whose call sign I now have,
W5KWQ, the two of them went and got certified
together when my dad was high school, college
age. And when my parents moved to Houston, Texas,
where my father was an astronaut and my grandfather
still lived back in Enid, Oklahoma, The ham rig
was set up in my father's office and every other
night or so that was sort of the way we sat down
and had long talks with grandpa was with our
ham rig. And so I grew up with ham as a common
tool of the household. And so by the time I flew,
my father had already taken his, well in fact
the first ham radio setup to space aboard STS
-9, the ninth launch of the space shuttle. And
that was the first time an astronaut in space
spoke to the general public directly. And as
you obviously know, ham radio operators around
the globe could speak with my dad, including,
remember, some of his favorites were people like
King Hussein of Jordan, the previous King of
Jordan. was a big ham and we had a chance to
speak directly from space with him. So when I
began to put together the plan for my own space
flight, I was going to be flying 25 years almost
to the day from my father's shuttle flight. So
I knew that as his son and on such a good milestone,
I would be remiss if I did not also not only
take ham radios or operate ham radios when I
was on board, but try to kind of push it up a
notch from the status quo. And as many of the
hams out there who do some contacts with either
the ISS or satellites, you probably know, or
some of them may know, there's actually a couple
of radios that have been on board the International
Space Station for many, many years. and it's
not uncommon for astronauts and cosmonauts to
use those radios. And so the addition that I
did is I took up slow -scan television. And so
I took up a handheld microphone addition that
has a slow -scan TV device in it. And that way
when I was doing other experiments and so I couldn't
be at the radio myself, I would hook up the slow
-scan television device and I could leave it
at a window sort of automatically taking a picture
every couple of minutes and Transmitting it down
and taking a picture again and transmitting it
down and therefore the the radio would be in
use as close to 24 -7 as I could and And people
could get you know, even if there wasn't somebody
live to talk to they could get an echo kind of
a selfie portrait of themselves from the International
Space Station while I was while I was up there
and But I have to tell you, one of the other
things I did that I had good fun with was because
I was doing the Slow Scan TV activities and I
had a laptop in the loop as well, it also meant
that the day I arrived on the station, as I was
just getting all the gear set up, I brought a
folder full of images, of pre -selected images
that I could transmit down for the first few
orbits around the Earth. that I personally had
fun with where I sent down images of either test
patterns from like the old fashioned television
test patterns or a variety of eye tests and then
some kind of comical pieces like, you know, pictures
of a site of ham. or pictures of my dad, you
know, speaking from his emirate aboard the shuttle.
So in any case, I had a great time setting it
up. I had a great time doing it. But some of
the most interesting things that I remember from
operating in Ham was not only just the great
conversations I had with people truly all over
the globe, but also how impressed I was with
the community. When I would do things like, it
might be for the crew, it might have been two
or three o 'clock in the morning, let's call
it. I might have woken up in the middle of the
night to go to the head or something. I would
drift back by past the ham radio that is sitting
by a window. I'd look out the window, and I might
be looking down at, say, Australia. In the case
I'm describing, it was dark over Australia. Everyone
in the ground would have known that the crew
was asleep. This was our sleep schedule. There
would be no real reason to expect anyone on board
the International Space Station to be communicating
down, but all I had to do was click the the transmit
button on the microphone and Immediately, I'd
be swamped with three or four attempts to contact
and so it was It was really quite amazing to
just think about the fact that you know when
you're up there as an astronaut And that there's
still people all over the world who just have
their gear turned on tuned in and nearby to where
if you just cycle the microphone, they will assume
that that's a live body up there attempting to
transmit, which in this case it absolutely was,
and you know, had great 2 a .m. conversations
as I traveled across, in this case, Australia,
you know, 17 ,000 miles an hour. Yeah, and we're
gonna listen actually to a couple of those in
just a little bit, too, so. We'll give you a
little idea of what that sounded like, both up
there and down here. Now you mentioned your father,
Owen, W -5 LFL, and his being the first person
to speak to the general public from space, from
Space Shuttle Columbia back in 83. Tell us how
that impacted your desire to go up there. how
that inspired some parts of your new book, and
that's called Explore Create. So tell us a little
bit about the book and the inspiration. Well,
you know, what was interesting about growing
up in an astronaut household at that time, and
I'm sure that's largely true still today, but
you know, when my dad would come home from the
office, which of course was NASA, he would often
come home with an armload of high -tech gear.
and the ham radio sort of fit into this pantheon,
but it would include, in addition to the ham
radio gear, it might be things like something
that at the time was referred to as a photomultiplier
tube, basically, in this case, a hand -forged
piece of aluminum that you could screw a camera
lens into the front of and a telescope's eyepiece
into the rear of and turn or rotate a knob on
the side, and this photomultiplier tube would
take a very dark image and brighten it. And today
we know that technology as night vision, but
the night vision didn't exist at this time. So,
you know, my dad was bringing back this thing
that was really going to be used for starlight
magnification, but we would use it to go run
around in the backyard and chase the cat who
had no idea how he could stay in the dark. And
similarly, he would bring home, you know, optical
prism glasses that would reverse right and left
because they had learned that if you wear these
things for three days that your left and right
vision will correct itself. I mean, your brain
will reverse the image. But then when you take
them off, it takes you about three days to reorient
your left, right vision the other way around.
And these were just kind of the toys that we
would play with. So whether it was a ham radio
or optics or other forms of electronics, these
were... These were the things we did at home.
And even, for example, my junior and senior year
science fair project was actually related to
ham radio operations. In particular, don't forget,
when I was in high school, this is the day before
personal computers. I was there right at the
advent of personal computers. And so when my
dad or other ham radio operators, many of the
people here I'm listening in today, if you want
to try to talk to someone over the horizon, You
know, you have to find a frequency that you can
bounce off the ionosphere and try to reach beyond
the horizon by finding a frequency that'll create
a good focal point at the distance you want to
reach. And at my dad's time, they knew this,
you know, my dad's specialty was upper ionospheric
physics. He was trying to bounce radio waves
off the ionosphere himself and was becoming sort
of a specialist at it. But he was doing it with
slide rule. and doing it sort of a guess at a
time and kind of interpolating from there. And
I was already becoming a kind of computer whiz
kid. And so my dad turned to me and said, hey,
Richard, you could probably write a program that
if I gave you a atmospheric profile, you could
very quickly run through a set of frequencies
and show which frequencies would be best for
which distances of communication. And I said,
you're right, I can do that. So he helped me
with the math. I wrote out the code. And for
two years, I've earned my first place ribbons
in competitions by first starting with radio
wave propagation, but then moving on into sound
wave propagation in air and water and even geophysical
stuff underground. And so, but it really all
goes back again to ham radio. Wow. Now that's
a science fair project. It was, you know, I was,
I was a BC student, but I was, I aced. science
fairs. I won many of them from kindergarten through
graduation. Well, it sounds like you're definitely
the whiz kid, which reminds me a little bit of
myself. I wasn't quite that far along. kind of
early adopter into computing as well. So tell
us about the book, how that all leads into your
book about exploring and creating things. Yeah,
well, you know, what's interesting is you mentioned
up top in my bio, this kind of interesting hybrid
that I've had through my life of of both being
a creator of video games. I've been very fortunate
to create a number of best sellers down through
the years and help set standards for both visuals
and user interface and even broader design ideas
as well. At the same time, I've always been this
avid explorer and been to the deep sea and space
and all around all seven continents. When I think
about those things, I then watch other people
trying to create games or create original products
of various kinds. And one of the things I've
noticed is when I observe others and I try to
sort out who can do this well and who has a harder
time with creating original, compelling content
or ideas broadly, whether it's business or science
or story or entertainment, I started to notice
there was this theme. The theme to me was associated
with my exploration. I then began to realize
that I sort of, at least for me, found that what
allowed me to, or at least aided me greatly in
being a successful creator of original ideas
was because I'm not only just an avid explorer,
but I'm a voracious consumer of knowledge around
me. I not only like to explore physically, but
I like to explore in literature. I like to explore
any new subject that comes up that I am pondering
for a product or an experience. I go buy a research
library on that subject. I pay a lot of attention
to the details of how that subject is implemented
in the world around me. And I find that when
it comes to trying to be a creator, those that
decide they want to create by stepping off where
someone has recently been. They're saying, hey,
the best game I've seen around might play like
this, and I like that kind of game, but I know
how to improve it incrementally. Those are usually
not successful. The ones that are more successful,
the ones who say, I have a wholesale revision
of how the industry works, or how this product
line works, or how to tackle this kind of problem.
And those inspirations usually come from very
far afield, from You know, my inspirations for
computer games, for example, you know, come from
movies, they come from travel, they come from,
you know, moral philosophy, as often as not.
They come from a study of linguistics and the
sociology around those linguistics. And so, you
know, I find that my best creation comes from
the deep research that I do in unrelated fields.
And so that's sort of That was sort of the basis
of the book, is sort of trying to draw those
together, and the book is written as a collection
of short stories with these little interstitials
to collect them together or to hopefully tie
them together, where I move from a creation story
to an exploration story, and then the interstitials
are often challenges, where I challenge somebody
and say, look, if you live, say, for example,
here in New York City, where I'm talking to you
from right now, the city right now, and for the
five years that I've been up here, there are
six -foot -tall meter around liquid nitrogen
tanks on every six or eight the street corner
all through Manhattan and most New Yorkers walk
by and don't even notice but having come here
from the outside it was one of the first things
I noticed and it pretty quickly bothered me as
to why are these things here and why don't they
go away and I put some photographs of these in
the book and I challenge people to figure out
what they are and I'll leave that for you to
figure out. If you go Google liquid nitrogen
tanks in New York City and go to images, you
will see that all over New York there are these
tanks. And the real question is, why are they
there? And these are the sort of details that
I refer to when I say, pay attention to the world
around you, understand as much as you can, be
bothered when you don't understand enough to
go dig up the answer yourself. And I think that
helps in the process of creation. All right,
so that book is called explore create and you
can pick that up just about anywhere Over Christmas
break. I had a chance to go home and visit with
my dad and we dug up a cassette tape That we
recorded of your dad on two meters talking from
space I was 13 years old at the time in junior
high and I still remember the day very vividly.
It was a Sunday morning. We were up trying to
listen in and hoping that we caught a pass. We
didn't have all the technology to tell exactly
when and where that was going to happen and getting
ready for church. And all of a sudden, we thought,
well, we better grab the tape recorder and...
And all of a sudden we heard your dad calling
and we missed it. It's like, oh no, we missed
it. So we go back and grab, you know, the tape
recorder and hope for a little bit more. And
this is what we heard. WB9UKG W5LFL from WB9VPG
Whiskey Bravo 9 Victor Puppet Golf WB9VPG WB9VPG
Come on. Acknowledge. We missed it on tape. We
should be just about passing over Florida at
this time. And W -5 Lima Foxtrot Lima is calling
you to North America. So you know that was that
was pretty pretty memorable and even though he
didn't hear us It did land me on the front page
of the local newspaper, but, uh, you know, it
was, it was just fascinating to hear, you know,
somebody from space for the first time. And,
um, you had a chance to operate from there and,
um, you've, uh, been gracious enough to share
some audio, um, from your trip. So we'll, we'll
play this and then, uh, we'll kind of talk about
where this is, uh, Where this is heard otherwise
Yes, my goal is foxtrot 5 America Sierra Delta
Fox 5 alpha Sierra Delta near Paris QSL Yes,
my name is Jérôme, Juliet, Echo, Romeo, Oscar,
Mike, Echo, Jérôme is my name, Roger? Jérôme,
great to make the contact with you there in Paris,
on your call sign, 525, Alpha Sierra Delta, great
QSL, I hear you 5 by 9, thank you, bye bye 73.
Yes, 73 Richard, it was a pleasure to meet you
on VR today, 73 Richard, I'll see you later,
bye bye. So that's some audio of you from the
from the ISS and and tell our listeners where
that audio is hidden. Ah, well that that actually
was sent to me by the individual on the ground
who is also one of the players of my new game
Shroud of the Avatar. So, you know, just to tie
all these communities together, you know, as
no one listening would be surprised. radio operators
come in all stripes, including those that play
medieval fantasy role -playing games, which is
obviously my core business. Yeah, so a little
audio from Shroud of the Avatar. That's exactly
right. He sent me that recording and then we
took it and we in the Shroud of the Avatar, even
though it's sort of a medieval fantasy game,
we do have some kind of Tesla style, technology
creeping in, a little bit of steampunk technology
clicking in. And so we even put in these cylinder
record players and these ethereal amplification
devices, basically radios, and so we put that
recording actually in the game. So any ham radio
operators come in and play Shroud of the Avatar,
and you can hear some actual ham chatter from
Earth to space and back as well. Well, how cool
is that? Well, we gotta pay some bills, but I'll
be back and we're gonna take some calls. We'll
take your calls after this message from the HamStation
right here on HamTalk Live. This episode of HamTalk
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-HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Now, here's more
HamTalk Live. Welcome back to HamTalk Live. The
HamStation has you covered for both new and used
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or go to HamStation .com. Tell them you heard
it on HamTalk Live. Well, it's time for your
calls now. If you have a question for Richard,
give us a call at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812
-638 -4261 or you can Skype us at HamTalk Live
or you can tweet us at HamTalk Live. as well.
While we're waiting on the calls, Richard, I
wanted to ask you which radio were you using
when you were on the Space Station? Well, there
were two that were up and operational, both the
Kenwood TM -700 and an Ericsson NPX. I used them
both, but if memory serves me well, it was the
Kenwood that I primarily used. And mostly just
because I could attach the slow scan television
device to it and that I left on orbit And so
I'm guessing a few of you may have seen other
images brought down since then because You know,
I left it on board for so for future ham to use
Yeah, great. And yeah, the the Erickson is finally
given up and so we're working on getting I knew
Kenwood up there soon, and hopefully we'll get
that all funded and launched up there soon, ready
to go. We do have a call on the line, so let's
go to that. Who's this? My name is Chris, Victor
Alpha 3, Echo Charlie Oscar. Can you hear me
okay? Absolutely. Hi Richard, we worked in 2008
when you're on the space station. Really proud
moment of my life. And I gotta say thank you
very much for doing that, working so many people.
It was amazing to hear you work the pile up.
And I was one of your last people. You were packing
up your gear to head back to Earth that day.
Next morning at work, I saw you on CNN in a lawn
chair in Kazakhstan. And it just blew my mind.
It sort of made the planet so much smaller to
see a guy I just talked to. in Kazakhstan the
next day. Back to you, Richard. Yeah, no, thanks,
Chris, very much. You know, and thanks for the
thought there, too, about those contacts. You
know, I had one of my other kind of personal
goals when I went up. I had a very busy schedule
of experiments and other activity. And, you know,
it set aside maybe an hour a day to try to work
the radios. And I was on orbit for about the
same amount of time as my dad had been up on
Space Lab. but I knew that he also was very busy
doing things other than ham radio. And so one
of my goals was to make more contacts than he
did just for bragging rights as his son. But
I only thought of that once I was on orbit, so
I actually didn't know exactly what his count
was. And so I actually, somewhere between pentupled
and tenfolded his contact list just because I
was just so devoted to doing it. That combined
with the fact that, as you say, working the pile
up, as soon as you realize how many people are
trying to reach you, you're really disappointed
if you don't manage to read back clearly someone's
call sign. Knowing how it, well frankly, it probably
felt very similar to me on orbit, you really
want to do this well. I remain very diligent.
My biggest problem on orbit was finding more
places to record all my contacts. I began to
use the backside of all my instruction manuals
to find enough paper to write down all the contacts
I was making so I could keep track of it back
on the ground. Well, Richard, you're working
them like a pro, and I look forward to reading
your book. And I'm sure there's other people
calling, so I'll let you go and make some more
calls. Thank you again very, very much. Thank
you, Chris. Really appreciate it. Nice to talk
to you again eight years later. Thanks Chris.
Thanks for calling. Appreciate it. 812 -NET -HAM
-1 812 -638 -4261 is the telephone number or
the high -tech way. Skype us at HamTalk Live.
If you have a question or comment for Richard
Gary at W5KWQ give us a call now at 812 -NET
-HAM -1 812 -638 -4261. Did you spend most of
your time, since you went with the Russians,
did you spend most of your time in that Russian
module or were you in the US module? Where did
you spend most of your time when you were on
board? Well, funny you should ask because that
ended up being a political issue just prior to
my flight. I originally was scheduled to do a
lot of work in the US segments. Then, just prior
to my flight due to politics, the U .S. government
actually tried to keep me out of anything other
than the Russian segment. Fortunately, however,
the rules of space are like the rules of the
open sea, where the commander of the vessel makes
the rules. And so despite governmental objection,
I got clearance from the crew commander to continue
my work as originally planned. I did in fact
spend a significant amount of time in all the
modules doing a variety of research, a variety
of kinds of research. Some of the research I
was doing was on visual acuity. It turns out
I'm the first person who's ever flown with corrective
eye surgery. And so they studied my eyes in detail
and have since then approved corrective eye surgery
for astronaut candidates. And that I needed to
do in a very brightly lit module. I did other
things like protein crystal growth that really
needed to be undisturbed. And so the central
corridor of modules would have been inappropriate
from just not getting bumped into and having
little vibrations. So that instead sat way up
at the bow of the space station, which was not
used. That area was not used much. So I could
let an experiment sit there and cook for the
two weeks I was in space. So I was all over.
Okay, very good. 812 Net Ham 1 is the phone number.
812 -638 -4261 to give a call to Richard, W5KWQ.
We have about five minutes left so if you want
to call now is the time to do so. And maybe kind
of a strange question, have you ever tried to
contact the station from down here? You know,
I have. I've actually been successful. I actually
was unsuccessful myself. And just like you said
one time when you were trying to call up to the
station, I have done that myself. I've been actually
at NASA when we had some unsuccessful attempts
to reach the station. But then on my own and
often with school kids, we'll occasionally also
try to make ISS contacts. In more recent times,
we've been more successful. I think that the
process is just better known now, and you know
when the station is really traveling overhead,
and the crew on board is listening out at the
right time, so it's just easier to coordinate.
So more recently, I've had more success. In the
early days, I would say I had more failures.
812 Net Ham 1. 812 -638 -4261 is the number to
call. And that's kind of reassuring to know that
sometimes it doesn't work for you, too. No, exactly
right. Exactly right. You know, actually, one
of my biggest disappointments of my ham radio
use is one of the one of the contacts I really
wanted to make was with a group of friends who
were going to be in Austin, Texas, were camping
out on some property that I have. And they were
they were actually on the property for different
reasons that they were going to be camped out
there anyway. but one of my friends was a ham
radio operator and he brought out a rig and the
group all got around the campfire and watched
the ISS go by and we did not manage to connect.
That was about two minutes late to get the rig
set up and getting the rig set up and trying
to get the connection going. We just, a little
bit too late, a little bit too off target and
didn't quite make the connection, but that bothered
me for days. Still bothers me to this day. you
know you disappoint somebody with you know trying
to make a contact so I definitely know the agony
of defeat as well yeah in my teaching career
I found that experiments always work until you
do them in front of kids Yeah. And it doesn't
matter, you know, if it works every single time.
You do it in front of kids and now it doesn't
work. So yeah, we're all susceptible to, uh,
to those moments. Eight one two net ham one is
the number eight one two six three eight four
two six one. Just a couple of minutes left. We've
got time for, for one more call here. If you
want to chime in at ham talk live eight one two
net ham one. Let's see, there was something else
I was going to ask and it has escaped me for
the moment. Your book is available how? Yeah,
the book really just came out so this is the
end of week one for the book launch and just
the start of a book tour. You know, so HarperCollins
is the publisher and you get to whatever your
favorite book reseller is, both the brick and
mortar stores as well as digital places like
Amazon and others, all should have it. It's even
available as an audio book and as a digital book
as well. So all the forms you might like, whatever
suits your fancy, you can track it down. It's
funny that I often joke with people that even
if you won't like the book, you might just find
the list of people I managed to put a blurb on
the back of the book made me particularly happy
and I think sounds like a pretty good group of
endorsers. It includes everybody from Elon Musk
to Stephen Hawking, a gentleman by the name of
Ernest Cline who wrote a book called Ready Player
One, a recent bestseller. I was sort of the inspiration
for his main character. It includes people like
Alexei Lanoff, the first person to do Spacewalk,
and Steve Wozniak, the developer of the Apple
II computer. All those folks and more stuck a
blurb on the back for me, and so hopefully it'll
convince a few people to at least give it a shot.
Yeah, you've got quite an impressive list. on
the cover there. So I appreciate you taking time
out to talk to us and come on the show and talk
about the book a little bit and talk about your
experiences in space and thank you for making
all those contacts and helping us out and getting
some space into Ham Radio. We sure appreciate
it and thanks so much for coming on the show
tonight. Wonderful, my pleasure. I sure appreciate
it as well and look forward to talking to you
again if not here on Skype, maybe from back on
the ham radio frequencies, either terrestrial
or from space. Oh, that would be excellent. I
would thoroughly enjoy that. Well that's a wrap
for this week's edition of HamTalk Live. I'd
like to thank my guest Richard Gary at W5KWQ
and everyone out there in cyberspace for listening
and calling in and invite you back next Thursday
night at 9 p .m. Eastern Time and for a list
of all of our upcoming guests just go to HamTalkLive
.com. So for now this is Neil Rapp WB9VPG saying
7 -3, 7 -5 and may the good DX. be yours.