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July 10, 2021
by Marcia Dunn
Virgin Galactic will be the first rocket company to launch the boss when Richard Branson buckles himself into one of his sleek, shiny spaceplanes this weekend.
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The self-proclaimed anti-tie adventurer and troublemaker will team up with five of the company’s employees on Sunday for a test flight out of the southern New Mexico desert – the company’s fourth trip to the edge of space.
Branson ranked first The entire Virgin Galactic crew jumped in front of Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, an even richer rocket man who wanted to venture into space. Bezos’ launch is scheduled for July 20th from West Texas.
Just a week before his 71st birthday, the London-born Virgin Group founder says he’s « not worried at all and it’s the dream of a lifetime « to fly into space. The long-time fitness fan has made an extra effort to prepare for the short flight to and from the flight. « I’m in my 70s now, so you either let yourself go or you get fit and enjoy life. » His wife, children and grandchildren will be there when he gets on board the rocket plane, which is attached to a twin-fuselage aircraft for takeoff. During the three to four minutes of weightlessness I will look back on our beautiful earth and take in everything and find that only 500 other people have done this. Closer to 600, actually, but still a relatively small number. On landing he will celebrate with « a big, big grin on his face ».
Two pilots are required to launch the rocket plane from the moment it is released from the mothership until it shoots into space slides onto a runway. It is the third trip into space for Chief Pilot David Mackay, a Royal Air Force test pilot who was born in Scotland and later flew for Branson’s Virgin Atlantic, and the second for Chief Flight Instructor Michael Masucci. The chief ronaut Beth Moses, a former NASA engineer, is also starting for the second time. Branson’s newcomers to space include Lead Operations Engineer Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla, a Vice President. The six are led by mothership pilots C.J. Sturckow, a former NASA astronaut, and Kelly Latimer.
Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane will take off on a specially designed twin plane nicknamed Eve after Branson’s late mother. After reaching nearly 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), the aircraft is released and falls for a moment or two before its rocket motor fires to send the aircraft on a steep climb into space exceeding 3 G or three times the force of gravity. The engine switches off as soon as the vehicle reaches space – a maximum altitude of around 88 kilometers is expected – and envelops the ship in silence, while everyone but the pilots unbuckle their seatbelts, float and out of the 17 windows onto the earth and the black void overlook space. After a few minutes of weightlessness, the occupants buckle up again while the aircraft realigns itself for boarding – by folding up the wings and then folding them down again using a unique technique known as springing. The rocket plane will slide back NASA space shuttle style to complete about 15 minutes of free flight.
Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 when Branson teamed up with aircraft designer Burt Rutan to provide the necessary spacecraft technology. In a 2007 rocket engine test in California’s Mojave Desert, three workers died and three others were injured. In 2014, the Enterprise rocket plane – named after the “Star Trek” ship – broke apart on a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other. Unity, the replacement ship named by the late physicist Stephen Hawking, began flight tests in 2016. It made its first two-pilot voyage to the edge of space in 2018 and the second in 2019, both times from Mojave. Operations have been relocated to Spaceport America in New Mexico, from where the aircraft flew up May 22 to make the company’s third space flight.
After launching Branson, Virgin Galactic is planning two more test flights this summer and fall before paying customers are invited on board. The next one will have more company employees and the last one will have members of the Italian Air Force doing research. If all goes well, the first of the more than 600 confirmed ticket holders will board next year. The company plans to reopen reservations once Branson skyrockets. The first tickets cost $ 250,000; not a word on whether that will change. Branson promises a surprise after his trip to « give more people the chance to become astronauts – because space belongs to all of us. » In the meantime, scientists are lining up for research trips, including Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who was behind NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond.
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