Virgin Galactic selling more than a thrill ride
Branson hopes Overview Effect generates a protective love of Earth
MOJAVE, Calif. – Deep inside The Spaceship Company’s secretive Building 79, a man points to a rigid but lightweight panel made from carbon fiber that is the thickness of two decks of cards.
The absurdity of what he’s about to say makes him smile.
“There’s just about 1 inch between you and space,” says Enrico Palermo, president of Virgin’s The Spaceship Company, which is tasked with building the plane-like crafts that Virgin Galactic plans to use to take paying customers on a joy ride into the cosmos next year.
“That’s it, 1 inch,” says Palermo, pointing at the thin hull material and shaking his head during a tour of the facility in November. “Amazing what humans can do.”
Especially when it comes to space. Venturing into the cosmos has always packed a thrill, a risk, an adventure and a cost in both dollars and lives. It always was down to government agencies and professional astronauts to pay that price and reap those rewards. But no longer.
If all goes to plan, though admittedly little in the realm of space exploration does, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic could be the first of a few techtitan-fueled private space ventures to blast ordinary humans into space and return them safely to Earth.
The company’s tourism spaceship hit a new target Thursday, for the first time soaring more than 50 miles above California’s Mojave Desert. “SpaceShipTwo, welcome to space,” the company wrote on its Twitter account after the test. But whether Virgin Galactic becomes merely a thrill ride for those with $250,000 for a ticket or a giant leap for mankind remains a looming question.
For his part, Branson is confident his new company will be both, a unique adventure whose payoff – the so-called Overview Effect, where humans gape in wide-eyed awe at our big blue marble from 50 miles high – will generate a protective love of home.
“We will provide a platform for those (Virgin Galactic customers) to share their experiences and accelerate the global understanding of a fundamental truth, that we are essentially all in this together, fellow passengers on spaceship Earth,” Branson told USA TODAY in an email exchange.
“I am,” he adds, “one of those who feels reasonably optimistic for the future of planet Earth as a good place for humans to live, despite the huge challenges.”
With his “leave Earth to appreciate it” mission statement, Branson is taking a tack that differs from that of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin rocket company envisions humans living and working in space, or SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who famously is aiming for human colonization of Mars.
But where Blue Origin officials say only that tickets go on sale next year for its autonomous space ride and SpaceX has plans to send up a lone customer as more of a one-off venture, Virgin Galactic is making noises that 2019 could bring regular customer trips out of its futuristic Spaceport in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
A history of missed targets
Some might not be holding their breath. Virgin Galactic has a history of promising imminent flights dating back a decade. In 2008, Branson predicted an inaugural flight within 18 months, and reiterated that timing in 2011. In the spring of 2013, Branson predicted he’d be space-bound by Christmas, perhaps dressed as Santa.
Missed targets aside, at the very least a spirit of competition among three men who have been passionate about cosmic adventures has spawned a new space race.
“Elon and Jeff and Richard have looked at the human-based (government space) programs that existed and concluded rightly they weren’t keeping pace,” says Christian Davenport, author of “The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos.”
“These folks come out of the tech world, or in Richard’s case he’s funded all sorts of ventures, and they operate at a quick pace,” Davenport says. “There’s overall a huge frustration that, after NASA stepped away (from the Space Shuttle program), that we haven’t pushed farther into space. No one’s flown (tourists) into space. But Virgin Galactic now is getting close.”
USA TODAY recently visited the company’s longtime desert-based headquarters two hours north of Los Angeles to check on the company’s progress as it races toward its first commercial launch.
Each 90-minute Virgin Galactic trip will star two pilots and six passengers, including on the inaugural ride with Branson and his two children, Sam and Holly, as well as for the first of 600 customers who have already paid for flights (they’re refundable if you opt to bail).
The rare facility tour – which was focused on a series of cavernous buildings dedicated to manufacturing and testing its plane-like SpaceShipTwo (SS2) – kicked off with a dawn launch of WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), the massive, albatross-shaped mother ship that carries SS2 50,000 feet for its airborne launch.
As the gangly white craft taxied down the runway, Virgin Galactic chief pilot Dave Mackay, an amiable Scot who is one of a half-dozen experienced fliers slated to ferry customers into the great beyond, waxed lyrical about the joy ride.
“We’ve all been around the block,” says the former Royal Air Force and exVirgin Airlines pilot. “But when we do these tests (of SS2), we’re just like little kids again.”
Mackay runs through the sequence that Virgin Galactic customers will experience. After strapping into their reclining seats, SS2 is taken to just above commercial jet altitudes by WK2. “We’ll talk a bit, but won’t bore them,” Mackay says with a laugh.
At cruising altitude, things get serious. WK2 drops SS2 and banks away sharply. “You’ll feel like you just went over the lip of a roller coaster,” says Mackay. Just under four seconds later, with WK2 safely away, pilots will light the rocket aboard SS2, a solid rubber compound that is ignited by nitrous oxide.
“That’s when the fun starts,” says Mackay, a veteran of numerous such test flights as Virgin Galactic pushes toward commercial readiness. SS2 suddenly takes off like a Roman candle, heading straight up and subjecting passengers to four times the force of Earth-bound gravity.
Pushing speeds close to Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, SS2 will take roughly 60 seconds to reach the blackness of space, which officially starts at 50 miles up.
And then, almost instantly, silence as the rocket exhausts itself. SS2 then will gracefully pivot upside down, giving the new astronauts an unfettered view of the earth through 12 big portholes.
“They can then unbuckle and float around,” he says of the few minutes of weightless that mark the defining moment of the trip. “Then it’s back in the seats and the flight back home.”
‘The ultimate adventure trip’
For those waiting to board SS2, the moment of truth can’t come soon enough.
Vivien Cornish, 54, was given a ticket to ride by her husband to mark her 50th birthday. The retired money manager from Sydney says she doesn’t like cars or jewelry but has “always been into adventure travel, and this is the ultimate adventure trip.”
Cornish says she has met some of her fellow ticket holders – which Virgin Galactic calls Future Astronauts – at sponsored trips that so far have included group visits to the California headquarters, attendance at air races in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and a gathering at Branson’s retreat on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands.
“For some people, it’s all about the zero G experience, but for me it’s about the Overview Effect,” she says. “Earth is wonderful and we have to look after it.”