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Search and recovery crews buzzed in on Mi-8 helicopters and extracted Richard Garriott, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko from the gumdrop-shaped capsule, which landed on its side on the brushy surface under a clear sky. "What a great ride that was," said Garriott, an American computer game designer who paid some $30 million for a 10-day stay on the space station. Sitting in an armchair and wrapped in a blue blanket against the near-freezing temperature on the steppe, he smiled broadly. "This is obviously a pinnacle experience," Garriott said in footage on Russian and NASA TV. Garriott was greeted by his father Owen Garriott, a retired NASA astronaut who flew on a the U.S. space station Skylab in 1973. "Hey, Papa-san," said Richard Garriott. The pair shook hands. "I'm looking forward to some fresh food and to calling my loved ones," said Garriott, 47, who lives in Austin, Texas. He was seen off by his girlfriend and bother, among others, when he rocketed up to the station on another Soyuz craft on Oct. 12. "I've got my father here, but I've got other family back home I want to get a hold of." Volkov sat next to Garriott. The son of a cosmonaut, he beat out Garriott as the first human being to follow a parent into space when he flew up to the space station six months ago. Kononenko, who also spent 199 days in space, was the last out of the capsule and could not be seen in the footage.
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