The price makes the 14 May launch the single most valuable flight for pure science in the history of European space activity.

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In May he joined with Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, to support the opening of a new National Flight Academy that will teach math and science to young people through an aviation-oriented camp.

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True to the title of the book, many of these have involved experiments that explore the limits of human ingenuity in realms such as private space flight, brain science and digital knowledge-gathering.

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From the scientific perspective, for the story to close for science, flight rates have to be high, said Alan Stern, chair of the scientific organizing committee for the conference and associate vice president of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science and Engineering Division in Boulder.

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At the time of his space flight, Garriott worked at MMO publishing giant NCSoft on the science-fiction MMO Tabula Rasa.

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Looking very much like the cover of a circa 1970 science fiction novel, the engraving is a pleasing dedication to the art of the era of space flight.

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