I’m going to be the first Scot in space!
As a boy in the Highlands, he gazed in awe at the night sky. Now, aged 61 Dave Mackay will blast into the void at 2,300mph
AS a child he would gaze up at the vast, star-filled skies of Scotland’s far north and dream of one day flying into the unknown darkness beyond. Now, decades later, Dave Mackay is to realise his childhood ambition and, at the age of 61, become the first Scot in space. The chief pilot for Virgin Galactic is set to blast off on his first flight beyond Earth’s atmosphere as early as this Wednesday – and will mark the occasion by taking with him a Saltire and a scrap of his family’s tartan.
In an exclusive interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday, Mr Mackay revealed the details of the gruelling and stomach-churning training regime to prepare for the rigours of the flight.
Dismissing age as ‘just a number’, the former RAF pilot from Sutherland said that the payoff for his endless pounding workouts will be the breathtaking views back to Earth from more than 50 miles above the planet.
He also spoke poignantly about his desire to make his space trip a tribute to a friend and fellow pilot who died when an earlier test flight ended in tragedy in 2014. He believes is ‘ready for whatever happens’, but will never be complacent. Above all, he admits to being exhilarated about fulfilling his childhood dream.
He said: ‘What I look forward to is pulling the rocket motor switch and igniting it – then we’re at work and it’s happening.’
Mr Mackay, who has flown more than 140 types of aircraft and has 14,000 hours of flight experience in his 42 years in the air, is among the team of daring pilots helping tycoon Richard Branson develop commercial flights that can carry paying passengers to space.
He hopes to take the controls later this week during the latest test flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which aims to soar to the edge of space some 51 miles above California’s Mojave Desert. His last test flight took him to 32 miles above the Earth – toward the edge of the atmosphere, with extraordinary views and a newly philosphical outlook.
He said: ‘You see pictures of space, but for me it was the contrast between the brightness of the Earth and the dense blackness of space. Cameras don’t capture it like the human eye does. It’s one of those views you have to see with your own eyes.’
Such a view, without boundaries, has made him philosophical about our world’s future. He said: ‘Earth is just one small planet that we really need to take care of. That atmosphere is really thin and very delicate. That’s the message we’re trying to get across, it’s everybody getting together and working together’. The son of a police officer, Mr Mackay grew up in Helmsdale, the middle of three children. His mother Sheila, who still lives in the fishing village, worked in a bank. Speaking from the searing heat of the aeronautical test site, Mr Mackay disclosed that the military links of his native Sutherland were the inspiration for his career. He said: ‘That whole area was used for low-flying military training in the Cold War where one of the principal tactics was to fly as low as possible to use terrain shielding as defence.
‘We would see jets flying overhead and it looked extremely exciting to a young kid like me and I thought wow, what a tremendous job that would be.’
At the age of 12, as Mr Mackay watched the Apollo Moon landing on a black and white TV at his school, he learned that the astronauts were all former military test pilots. Suddenly his plan was clear: become a fast jet pilot, then an astronaut and walk on the Moon and Mars.
Mr Mackay had his first flight experience at the University of Glasgow where he studied aeronautical engineering and joined the university air squadron. After that he joined the RAF and served for 16 years, in which he flew the Harrier G7 and became Officer Commander of the Fast Jet Test Flight at Boscombe Down.
But with no programme available for UK astronauts, he left the RAF to join Virgin Atlantic in 1995, becoming a long-haul pilot on its Boeing 747s and Airbus 340s.
THEN a chance meeting with another Virgin pilot at a bar in Hong Kong in 2003 led him to check out the designs for GlobalFlyer, which was being built in Mojave by Scaled Composites for adventurer Steve Fossett.
Mr Mackay immediately saw the potential for space travel and joined the project that would become Virgin Galactic. The futuristic venture was founded by Virgin owner Sir Richard Branson and designed to
offer commercial space travel. In December it completed its first successful test flight into space, which saw the mothership VMS Eve climb to 43,000ft while the spaceship VSS Unity was attached.
Once high enough, Unity was released. She shot almost vertically into the sky and travelled at 2.9 times the speed of sound to reach 51.4 miles, or 271,268 feet.
According to NASA, space begins at 50 miles and, after an hour-long flight, Unity returned to Earth. Now more than 700 people have signed up for Virgin Galactic’s trips and paid $250,000 (£192,000) each for their tickets – among them Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber.
With his own flight looming, Mr Mackay has undertaken an ‘extraordinary number’ of training sessions in the simulator. He also has regular sessions in a centrifuge to recreate the force of the rocket of about 3.5G, which is akin to a very powerful drag racing car and will last for a minute during take-off. Mr Mackay said: ‘It’s like everything in life, if you practise it enough, that’s just the way it is.
‘We fly an aerobatic aircraft at least once a week and we are very much accustomed to high gravity, high accelerations. We also spin it and do aerobatic manoeuvres so our bodies become accustomed to it.’
Despite turning 61, Mr Mackaysays: ‘To me, age is just a number and I feel very fit and strong, although I get wrung out in the simulator and tested.
‘I had a really good wringing out in testing yesterday and despite everything they threw at me I was able to land the craft safely. The only reason I think about retirement is because of this number attached to me, but I have no desire to retire. I love my job.’
Yet the development of space flight has come at a high cost. In 2014, test pilot Michael Alsbury, a 39-year-old father of two, was killed when his craft disintegrated midflight. Mr Mackay was flying the mothership and felt the loss deeply.
HE reflects: ‘People ask how can you carry on when something like that happens? If people historically had taken that approach, where would we be today? ‘There have been aircraft and automobile accidents since time immemorial, but you can’t give up the first time you have a setback.
‘Sometimes really bad things happen, but we all believe – and Michael Alsbury would also have believed – in the ultimate aim, which is to make this programme successful.’ As to being scared, Mr Mackay says he would only be anxious if he ‘didn’t understand what’s going on’.
He added: ‘That’s why we train so hard, that’s why we fly these simulator sessions and are given multiple failures to deal with.
‘Some of them are really bad. If you do that enough and you train through every system and get used to dealing with multiple failures at any one time, you start to feel much more confident, that I don’t care what this vehicle throws at me, I can deal with it, and that gives you the confidence to go into the flight.
‘But it would be very bad to be totally cool about it because you have to be on your toes and there’s lots happening very quickly. It’s like you’re training for a cup final and put in all the work and you feel you are ready for whatever happens.’
Previously, Scotland’s closest encounter with space came in 2003 when Indiana-born Brian Binnie, who grew up in Aberdeenshire, flew SpaceShipOne to a height of 12 miles. But Mr Mackay is the first native-born Scot heading for space.
Asked how he felt about the honour, he said: ‘Scotland is my birth country and is responsible for my whole direction in flight as well.’
On launch day his son Duncan, 23, daughter Katharine, 18, and wife Sue, 59, will be in California to see him off, with his 95-year-old mother watching from Scotland.
Reflecting on his extraordinary career, he said: ‘I’m definitely extremely lucky to be here. When I was a boy I had this hugely ambitious dream of becoming an astronaut – and I never let go of that.’