The Chatter ‘Sir Richard’ and Branson: when two worlds collide
RICHARD Branson is one of the world’s best-known entrepreneurs. But the founder of Virgin is really two people: Sir Richard, the risk-taking, publicity-seeking adventurer; and Branson, the hard-headed private entrepreneur. The explosion of Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship above the Californian desert suggests that it was foolish to confuse the two.
His effort to launch people into suborbital space on an air-launched rocket ship is quintessential “Sir Richard” the adventurer.
He has always been drawn to dangerous expeditions, from high-altitude ballooning to transatlantic sailing, and has dreamt of going to space since he was a teenager.
But his business successes — from the Virgin music label to airlines and cellphones — are quite different. They do not flow from fundamental research on technology in the same way that Boeing’s and Google’s do. Virgin takes mature technologies and exploits them in a fresh way.
Until now, Branson has avoided the mistake of mixing up these facets of his life. He has not offered Virgin customers balloon rides around the world or invested in technology that may well fail.
The two facets complement each other. “Sir Richard’s” adventures create publicity and have made him a well-known and -liked figure in many potential markets. This comes in useful when, for example, trying to challenge Carlos Slim’s América Móvil by launching Virgin Mobile in Mexico.
More substantially, this dashing persona forms the image of Virgin’s operations and helps it to recruit and motivate employees. The group is in the same business as other airlines and mobile providers, but promises an anti-Establishment, freethinking, informal style.
Virgin is a service brand. It launches in mature markets dominated by oligopolies, promising to be a cheerful, disruptive upstart.
This is far from what Branson the businessman took on a decade ago by allying Virgin with Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, and saying then that he planned to offer a space tourism service within three years.
After two fatal test programme explosions — the first in 2007 and the second on Friday last week — that optimistic prediction does not look any closer to being fulfilled.
It could easily take another decade or more for the nascent technology to reach a standard of safety at which Virgin Galactic gains approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration. Only then could it commence the space trips for which it has charged potential passengers up to $250 000 (about R2.7-million) each.
The gulf between the two Bransons has been on display in the past few years.
In one breath, he has promised that space tourism is just around the corner — a safe, reliable service offering the ultimate thrill for those with money to spare. In another, he has pointed out that five decades of development have not made space travel safe: 3% of Nasa astronauts have died.
A 97% chance of survival is good enough for “Sir Richard”; it would be ludicrous for a Virgin-branded service, as Branson the businessman acknowledges. That accounts for his hesitant tone last weekend when he was asked whether he intends to persevere with Virgin Galactic.
He may belatedly have realised that the safety gulf is too wide.
Virgin has one potential escape route. It could recoup some of its capital — and that of its co-investor, Aabar, the Abu Dhabi investment fund — by focusing on its plan to launch satellites as well as space ships, and dropping the tourism business. That would eliminate the risk of Virgin Galactic’s customers dying in its care, and “Sir Richard” could carry on exploring by himself. —© The Financial Times, London