Ok, maybe gamers did not love Tabula Rasa, the latest MMO project from Richard Garriot, the guy who is better known as Lord British of Ultima fame. The game, a sci-fi shooter MMO with a touch of mystique, is said to have had some financial problems, but whether or not those rumors are true is not the issue now. Richard Garriot is going into space and he wants to take some gamer DNA there with him.

Garriot has embarked on a program to get a spot on a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station and his liftoff is planned for October. He will spend most of his time on the ISA doing some pharmaceutical research, but one of the things that the game designer really wishes to do is to provide a "save game" for humanity by preserving digitized DNA on what he dubbed the "Immortality Drive".

Garriot said that "A select few U.S. players will have their DNA digitized and sent. And, theoretically, if anything happens to the human race, it could be their DNA that is used to resurrect humanity".

The active players of Tabula Rasa will be entered into a draw that will take place each Monday through the month of August and those who get picked will have their DNA analyzed, sequenced and then digitized. The resulting data will be stored on a drive that Lord British will take with him on his space trip.

A representative of NCsoft, the guys that run Tabula Rasa, has said that all the players who have an active account in the game on September 2 will also have their character profiles inscribed on the "Immortality Drive".

As part of a promotion for the game you can get into a free trial of Tabula Rasa and you can vote for the greatest achievements of humankind, knowing that the results will go on the Immortality Drive.