New York Times reporter John Schwartz has an amazing piece online today, I understand he's been working on it for a half a year or so. The story is about guy who owns his own Sputnik — or, more precisely, one of the spares built before the initial launch. He bought it during the 1990's post-Soviet fire sale.
There's a nice multimedia slideshowmajig along with the article.
So, OMG you'll never guess who the Sputnik owner is. Oh that's right, I put it in the headline for this post. Dude. It's Richard LORD BRITISH Garriott, the creator of Ultima and a very serious space-stuff collector.
Link to "Texas Man Linked to Past and Future of Space Exploration by Sputnik and Soyuz."
The story by Schwartz comes out in the same week as Sputnik's 50th anniversary, and on the same day as a related piece from Robert Pearlman, at CollectSpace.com. Don't miss the entire "10-famous-Sputniks countdown" feature on that site: Link. Image by Will Van Overbeek for the NYT.
