It is very easy to fall asleep in space. When you’re at your desk at home and you’ve been working for hours and you nod off, your chin bumps your chest and you wake up with a start. In space, your head doesn’t fall. You simply fade into sleep; if you’re untethered, you float away.

This is the sort of thing you hear when you speak with Richard Garriott, a man you may know better as Lord British. He’s made millions of dollars creating and selling videogames and spent most of it going to space.

He says there is no ground on the International Space Station, nor is there a ceiling. There are instruments and all sorts of other things attached to the walls. You can tell who is new to space flight by how they bump into things, sending them spinning in zero gravity. They zoom around like benign spacefaring shrapnel. It collects by the air vents if no one picks it up. Sleeping bodies find their way there, as well.

This is where Richard Garriott wants to take you, and he is much closer than you think.

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