Not plucky Lord British, though. No, the good lord is safe in his heaven and has found the time to transmit a coded message of hope to us earth-bound types.

The multisquillionaire held up a card containing the message shortly after reaching orbit - the message is encoded in Logos Elements - the fictional runic system used in Garriott's game Tabula Rasa.

Fans of the game have now decoded the runes and found it to be a quote - hit the jump to see what Lord British thinks we ought to know.

"Earth is the cradle of humanity but mankind will not be in the cradle forever."
-Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky (Soviet Rocket Scientist)

Wow, that's like, really deep.

Richard Garriott Sends Message During Launch

Not sure if there's any experimenting on the "immortality drive" to be done or not, but that was the keystone of his pre-flight hype. The drive contains the digitized DNA sequences of a bunch of earth types — our editor included, along with Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking. It'll stay aboard the space station in case life on earth is wiped out or something.

Garriott reportedly paid $30 million for his flight but said he was able to recoup "a significant slice" of that beforehand. He gets back to earth Oct. 24.

US Game Designer Blasts Into Space with DNA Cargo [Associated Press via Wired, AP Photo]