U.S. space tourist confident ahead of blast-off

By Maria Golovnina

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Richard Garriott, a U.S. space tourist due to travel to space on a Russian spaceship on Sunday, said he was unfazed by the prospect of a bumpy ride back to Earth, saying he expected to land safely.

Crews returning from the International Space Station have suffered from rough landings and massive gravitational force after Russia's Soyuz capsules slid off into dangerous "ballistic re-entry" twice in a row over the past year.

Richard Garriott, a U.S. video game tycoon who paid more than $30 million for his ticket, played down these concerns.

"I don't think it will bother me in the least," he told Reuters at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"I don't think we are going to have one (ballistic landing), but if we did, it would not concern me. It's still considered a pretty normal re-entry. I am confident my return will be safe."

In April, a South Korean space tourist said she feared death when her Soyuz capsule entered the atmosphere in the wrong place and plunged the craft into the steppes of central Kazakhstan in a steep descent.

Garriott, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, will travel to the ISS to conduct scientific experiments alongside U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.

The blast off is due on 1:03 p.m. (1:03 a.m. EDT) on Sunday. He will travel back with an outgoing ISS crew on October 24.

GEARING UP

As preparations proceeded ahead of the takeoff, the Russian spaceship was rolled across the barren landscape and fixed at its launch pad on Friday -- the very venue used by Yuri Gagarin in 1961 when he became the first man in space.

Garriott's father -- who had come to the sprawling Soviet-era cosmodrome set up originally as a clandestine missile test facility -- appeared relaxed as he observed the preparations on a bleak windy morning.

"I am not particularly apprehensive or nervous because this is a very reliable rocket," he said, gesturing at the Soyuz spacecraft, Russian and U.S. flags painted on its sleek body.

"He is very well prepared. He has trained for almost a year with the Russians."

His son's training, mostly carried out at a space center near Moscow, were overshadowed by a sharp deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations over Moscow's war with Georgia but Garriott said politics was of little interest to scientists.

"It has had an exactly zero impact on my dealings with the Russian side. But I have definitely felt some tensions coming across from the political side of the U.S. but even that has been minor," he said.

"If you look at the cosmonauts or astronauts, every one of them makes it very clear: we believe that space is a non political shared environment."