Sir Richard aiming for the stars
SIR Richard Branson has revealed he is training to become an astronaut as he takes on Amazon boss Jeff Bezos in the commercial space race.
The billionaire, who is attempting to get his space tourism company Virgin Galactic off the ground, said he will be catapulted into space within months.
“We’re talking about months not years – so it’s close. There are exciting times ahead,” he told BBC Radio 4’s You And Yours, to be broadcast today.
“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 to space.”
Sir Richard, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and Amazon founder Mr Bezos are leading the charge in commercial space tourism.
While Sir Richard believes Mr Musk is “doing fantastically well” in getting cargo into space and building bigger rockets, the real tussle is between the Virgin boss and Mr Bezos.
“I think we’re both [Sir Richard and Mr Bezos] 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.”
Sir Richard, 67, hopes to be one of those first space tourists.
Llanbedr Airport, in Gwynedd, has been proposed for a spaceport, one of several that could be licensed around the UK – although whether it will prove commercially viable to have more than one spaceport in the UK, and whether Llanbedr will be selected, are questions that remain to be answered.
If it does happen, the site could see rocket planes being launched from the runway to carry passengers and satellites into space.
However the plans took a blow last year when an influential report identified Shetland as the “ideal location” for satellite launches in Britain.
However, Aerospace Wales, which produced a joint Space Strategy with the Welsh Government in 2015, said the report was not definitiveand that the Llanbedr entry was pressing ahead.
John Whalley, of Aerospace Wales, said Team Wales – Snowdonia Aerospace Centre and Qinetiq, which placed several bids for Llanbedr with different partners – still had a number of interested commercial parties in the UK and abroad who were considering Llanbedr as a potential satellite launch pad and hub for space tourism.
He said towards the end of last year: “There is no reason the whole things cannot be done of a commercial basis. Llanbedr is a remote airfield, which is essential for this project, but our big USP is that it has a segregated airspace.”
It was estimated that, if successful, the spaceport, close to Shell Island, would generate £4.2m of income and create around 170 jobs.
But the proposal has not been without its critics, with the Snowdonia Society saying it would turn the “crown jewels of Wales’ identity” into a theme park and shatter the peace of the national park.