A Soyuz capsule carrying a Russian-American crew touched down on target in Kazakhstan on Friday after a descent from the international space station, safely delivering the first two men to follow their fathers into space. The Soyuz TMA-12 capsule landed at 9:37 a.m. Friday (0337GMT) about 90 km north of Arkalyk in north-central Kazakhstan, Russian Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin told The Associated Press. Search and recovery crews buzzed in on Mi-8 helicopters and extracted Richard Garriott, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko from the 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 televised comments. Garriott was greeted by his father, Owen Garriott, a retired NASA astronaut who flew on the US space station Skylab in 1973. “Hey, Papa-san,” said Richard Garriott, 47. The pair shook hands. “How come you look so fresh and ready to go?”
