DISNEY IMAGINEER TO DESIGN SUBORBITAL FLIGHT EXPERIENCES

Retirement, for many of us, means finally doing nothing. But Joe Rohde, at 65, isn't going to sit back: He's starting a new job as an “experience architect” with Virgin Galactic. That means he'll be designing details of your wish of actually travelling those faraway skies. For 40 years, Rohde worked for Disney as an Imagineer. He was one of the masterminds behind the Animal Kingdom theme park and Pandora: the World of Avatar. Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor, says “We're going to make sure that you're not just in the spaceship reacting to what has just happened to you, but you are ahead of the spacecraft, savouring everything that's going on.” Yes, it would be a shame to land back on terra firma and not remember much of your US$250,000 suborbital trip.