Russia ? An American computer game designer boarded the international space station Tuesday, floating onto the orbital outpost 35 years after his astronaut father circled the Earth on Skylab.

Richard Garriott was greeted by another man who has turned space flight into a family tradition: Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov, whose father is a decorated veteran of the Soviet space program.

Both proud fathers – Owen Garriott with a U.S. flag patch on his jacket and Alexander Volkov with a Soviet medal pinned to his chest – watched on a screen at Russian Mission Control outside Moscow as the Soyuz craft that delivered Garriott homed in on the station and docked flawlessly.