Ultima’s Lord British has safely returned to earth. The gaming mogul’s ten day trip into outer space has come to an end. While up there in the black, he participated in an interstellar toilet repair. Really. Not as glamorous as say, meeting alien life, but tons cooler than an earthly toilet repair. Joe the space plumber, perhaps?

At 7:34 Moscow Time (10:34 EST) the space tourist touched down in Kazakhstan. He has offered no comment about his trip to the press yet, but word on the street is that it was "totally awesome." Click the link for more on his arrival.

In other news, I can’t even afford closet space much less to go to outer space. What a cruel, cruel world!

South Korea has unveiled it’s first space launch vehicle, imaginatively named the KSLV-1. From an aesthetic standpoint, the thing is definitely a rocket. If you were to doodle a rocket in the binder of your eighth grade notebook, it’d probably look something like the KSLV-1.

The rocket, upon launch, is going to release Korea’s first satellite into the final frontier. The satellite will purportedly exist for "science and technology" reasons. Care to get any more vague guys?

The rocket will not be launching until April or June of next year due to a technical cooperation with Russia. It’s the cold war space race all over again. Awesome!

Vladimir Putin has long pushed for GLONASS, a national GPS system in Russia. Reuters reports that the system had it’s first launch yesterday, in the form of a collar around Putin’s prized pup Koni. Now he’ll be able to track the adorable labrador if she accidentally ends in a Siberian prison camp, or even worse, at a Gorky Park concert. According to Putin, "She’s wagging her tail, she likes it."

The GLONASS system has faced numerous delays, having supposed to be fully operational early in the year. Still, this is a good sign that the system could be just about ready for a public unveiling. No word on if Putin plans on sending his dog into space like that other famous Russian mutt.

In other news, GLONASS is probably the worst acronym for anything ever made. It sounds like a disease where symptoms would include whooping cough and a runny discharge.

While I swear this just looks like an industrial-strength Super Soaker, the Russians assure us that it’s really their attempt at a new kind of non-lethal weapon. It uses "electro-hydrodynamic effects," which basically means that a jolt of electricity is used to shoot out a high-velocity stream of water to take out the bad guy. As I’ve said in the past, I like non-lethal weapons, even when they kind of look like toys.

Have you ever longed to hop aboard one of the space shuttles bound for outer space? Have you daydreamed of spending a week or two on the International Space Station?

Your wishes might come true now that Space Adventures is looking to send a couple of regular folks into space in 2008 and 2009 aboard a Soyuz craft, and the firm will soon be selling seats for the low, low price of $100 million apiece.

Each experience includes cosmonaut training and over a week in space orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"With the successful flights of the first and only five private space explorers, we not only created the space tourism industry, but now, because of the global market demand, we have secured two additional Soyuz seats and have proposed to the Russian space agency the purchase of seats in 2010, and beyond," said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures. "The unique provision to Space Adventures of these commercial Soyuz seats has enabled my team to engage with potential clients from all over the world who have the interest in private spaceflight, the financial capability and the insatiable desire to explore."

Space Adventures, the only company to have successfully launched private explorers to space, is headquartered in Vienna, VA. with an office in Moscow. The company’s advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Charles Walker, Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev.