Is Sir Richard Branson about to win the new space race?
IT IS four years since tragedy appeared to signal the end of Sir Richard Branson’s hopes of winning the new space race. During a test flight over the Mojave Desert in California his Virgin Galactic craft crashed leaving one pilot dead and another seriously injured. Many observers feared the British tycoon’s dream of taking paying passengers on sub-orbital flights had gone down in ruins along with SpaceShipTwo.
The disaster, in October 2014, was a devastating blow and in the aftermath the normally ebullient Sir Richard considered throwing in the towel. Who on Earth would want to risk life and limb on one of his spaceships now?
However, you write the 67-yearold off at your peril. At the weekend Sir Richard claimed he is back at the forefront of the race, which promises to be the most exciting since the US and the Soviet Union battled to put a man on the Moon.
Commercial passenger flights are soon about to become reality, he insists. And for good measure Sir Richard is himself joining a punishing space training programme as he prepares to become one of the pioneers. “We are talking about months away, not years away,” says the billionaire founder of the Virgin empire.
“Exciting times. I’m going for astronaut training, I’m going for fitness training, centrifuge and other training so that my body will hopefully cope well when I go into space.”
Sir Richard, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are now in a three-horse race to carry fare-paying space tourists. The Briton says: “Elon is doing fantastically well getting cargo into space and he is building bigger and bigger rockets.”
Yet he identifies Bezos as his main rival, adding in an interview for BBC DELIVERING INTO ORBIT: Jeff Bezos SPACED OUT: Branson in front of a model of his intended spaceliner Radio 4’s You And Yours, to be broadcast today: “I think we’re neck and neck as to who will put people into space first. Ultimately, we have to do it safely. It’s more a race with ourselves to make sure we have the craft that are safe to put people up there.”
His determination to be on board the first flight is a show of faith in the Virgin Galactic spacecraft and also crucial to rebuild confidence. Human error was blamed for the fatal crash after SpaceShipTwo broke up at 46,000ft. A braking mechanism was deployed too soon, ripping the spaceship apart, but investigators also pointed to a lack of fail safes.
Pilot Peter Siebold survived after parachuting from the stricken craft but co-pilot Michael Alsbury, who made the fatal mistake, was killed. “If there was some kind of fundamental flaw with the spaceship then, I suppose, there would have been a possibility that we may have called it a day,” says Sir Richard, who has lavished more than £450million on the project. He was also buoyed by an overwhelming show of support from would-be customers with 97 per cent urging him to continue. About 700 have signed-up with Virgin Galactic to become space tourists, paying about £185,000 each for a ticket. They include actors Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks. The day after the crash, following much soul-searching and
intensive talks with his experts, Sir Richard resolved to keep going. “Space is hard but worth it,” he said. “I’m not one for giving up. My instinct would be that whatever happens we will carry on until we succeed.”
Pushing mankind’s boundaries has been marred by many fatalities over the years such as the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 with all seven crew members. But the difference now is that Sir Richard and his rivals are bidding to carry civilians, not professional astronauts. To keep costs down the rockets are re-usable.
There is a burning desire to be first. With that will come glory and bragging rights but safety standards must be ultra stringent. Any crash involving commercial passengers will almost certainly spell the end for the company involved.
Sir Richard, who plans to take space tourists 62 miles above the surface of the Earth (the point where space begins), knows he cannot afford another disaster. Since the 2014 crash, which grounded Virgin Galactic for two years, safety modifications have been made and test flights have resumed.
It is planned to launch passengers from Sir Richard’s Spaceport America in New Mexico after three days of training including how to manoeuvre in zero-gravity. Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft is released in mid-flight from a larger mother ship called White Knight Two.
Tesla electric car boss Musk, whose programme is called SpaceX, built his own Falcon Heavy re-usable rocket after baulking at the STARMAN: Elon Musk and, right, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying one of his electric Tesla cars, takes off from Florida
As he battles it out with tech visionary Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to get the first tourists into space, the Virgin boss says he’s just months away from the inaugural flight
price being charged by Russian developers. It is more cargo focused, capable of carrying 64-ton loads into space. Relishing the challenge, Musk said after a successful test launch in February: “We want a new space race – races are exciting.”
THE original space race began in 1957 when the Russians put a satellite into orbit and culminated in the Moon landing in 1969. Decades ago it was governments involved but now the super-wealthy have taken on the baton.
The final member of the present space race triumvirate is 54-yearold Bezos, the richest man on the planet with a fortune of £100billion. He is cautiously optimistic that his Blue Origin company will be taking fare-paying passengers to the edge of space by the end of this year, or early in 2019. “Space travel is the most important work I am doing,” says Bezos, who wants to colonise other planets.
Virgin Galactic trippers will get to spend about four minutes in space, working out at a cool £46,000 a minute. The company claims to have sufficient passengers to fill all flights until 2021. Each sortie will carry six passengers and two crew – just don’t expect anyone dispensing duty free.
Explaining his own space ambitions, Sir Richard says: “I’ve been lucky enough to meet a number of astronauts and I think they all feel that they were changed people as a result.
“The Earth is so beautiful and to be able to see it from space and experience something that only about 500 people have experienced is going to be incredible.”
Before the accident he planned to take his children, Sam and Holly, along for the ride on the first passenger flight but he said recently that he has had a change of heart. “Both my children have now got young children so I think I would most likely choose to do it myself initially but we will see a bit nearer the time,” he says cautiously.
Sir Richard, who has a habit of being over-optimistic when it comes to the timing of his first passenger-carrying space flight, has not yet confirmed a date for blast off. “It’s always the end of the year,” his mother Eve once commented wryly.
But this time – barring any further setbacks – it seems the final frontier is tantalisingly close for any aspiring astronauts out there. That is if they have exceedingly deep pockets.