A successful, American computer game designer fulfilled his childhood dream as he reached space on Sunday. Richard Garriott along with two crewmates blasted into the sky on Sunday inside a Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft from the Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan.

The tree men aboard the Soyuz are also carrying digitized DNA sequences of some of the world's most famous minds. Garriott, 47, became the sixth space traveler that paid for it. If all goes as planned, the Soyuz TMA-13 will dock Tuesday with the international space station (ISS). The multimillionaire from Austin, Texas, will spend 10 days in the ISS to conduct a series of experiments.

Garriott’s 77-year-old father Owen, a former astronaut who made it into space in 1973, was present at the launch site and watched as the Soyuz spacecraft blasted into the sky and disappeared.

"I'm elated, elated," Owen Garriott said after learning that the spacecraft had made it into Earth’s orbit. The Soyuz made it into the orbit in about 10 minutes.

Garriott paid a reported $30 million for the trip, but said that he managed to recover some of that sum through some of the experiments he plans to carry out while on the ISS.

"What I am trying to do is demonstrate that you can mount a very successful campaign to go into space and beyond because it's good business," Garriott told The Associated Press.

Garriott has with him the digitized DNA sequences of great people such as famous physicist Stephen Hawking, comedian Stephen Colbert and Matt Morgan. They will be stored into the ISS.

Garriott’s crewmates are American astronaut Mike Fincke and Russian Yuri Lonchakov.

The last two departures from Soyuz had to endure hard landings in the Kazakhstani steppe due to technical problems on Soyuz. But the Russian space agency has promised that everything will run smoothly this time.

The new ISS crew is scheduled to spend 175 days in space, working on scientific experiments and expansion projects to the station. This is scheduled to be the last mission manned by a trio.

It could also be the end of the age of space tourism, since all upcoming spots on the Soyuz have been set aside for professional astronauts.