richa r d br a nson ’s space line is flight-testing for a 2014 virgin U P galactic launch. after that: mars

by Adam higginbotham photography: chris crisman ometimes it almost seems to disappear into the desert. Conceived as a conjuring trick of architecture and topography, the Gateway to Space rises in a sinuous curve from the harsh New Mexico dust, its steel surfaces weathered into a red- brown mirage on the horizon; at twilight, the silhouette of the world’s first purpose- built commercial spaceport melts slowly into the ridgeline of the San Andres moun- tains, 30 kilometres away. The route that the package-tour astro- nauts of tomorrow will take through the building has been meticulously devised by the architects of Foster + Partners to fore- shadow the journey they will make into space: a concrete ramp ascends gently towards the centre of the building – a nar- row, hooded cleft that even in the blind- ing southwestern sunshine forms a small rectangle of perfect darkness. A mag- netic tag worn by each passenger triggers heavy steel doors that will open into a nar- row and dimly lit passageway, the walls curving out towards another blackened doorway, and a catwalk with views of the 4,300-square-metre hangar four storeys below, housing the fleet of in which they will travel. And then, the finale: the last set of doors swings open into the lounge, a vast, open space filled with natural light from an elliptical wall of windows, offer- ing a panorama of the three-kilometre- long spaceport runway, and the sky beyond. The effect is just as the architects intended: although the building is not yet complete, as spaceports, but the New Mexico complex of a billion dollars (£155 million); engineers has been paid for by the state of New Mex- when a group of prospective space tourists – Spaceport America – is the only one built have paved 16 kilometres of road simply to ico, whose citizens voted for a sales tax (above) The futuristic building that will house virgin galactic, in new mexico was brought to it, they found the experience from scratch and designed to accommodate connect the site to the outside world; the designed to finance its construction. so overwhelming they were moved to tears. a regular passenger service. It was raised bill for the runway alone will eventually On a cold November morning, Christine moon flights Yet there remains a great deal at stake from nothing on an isolated plain 50km from be $37m. And, although the building at its Anderson, the former US Air Force offi- (left) in 1968, The founder of pan am, juan trippe, began selling the promise of flights out here in the desert. There are now nine the nearest town. Creating it has not been centre bears Virgin Galactic’s name and was cial now charged with bringing Spaceport to the moon. tickets would be $14,000 and locations in the United States designated cheap: to date it has cost almost a quarter designed to the company’s requirements, it America to life, stands on a wind-whipped 98,000 signed up, expecting to travel by 2000

0 0 0 access road near the Gateway to Space. fact that had become possi- projects, Will Whitehorn, attempted to reg- at Mojave, a cluster of dun-coloured cor- and a scat- “This is the beginning of the commercial ble – yet only for those who were absurdly ister the Virgin identity for use by a space- rugated steel buildings scattered along a tering of engineers from experimental- passenger space-line industry,” she says. wealthy – brought him to a more profound line at Companies House in London, he concrete airstrip in the desert a few kilo- aircraft manufacturers Scaled Compos- Anderson’s crews are on target to complete realisation. “What I regretted more was discovered someone had beaten him to it. metres from Edwards Air Force Base. ites. They’re the ones who have spent their work by the end of 2013; Virgin Galac- that neither Russia nor America was really Branson had quietly trademarked the brand He is here to mark Virgin’s final acqui- much of the last ten years building the tic plans a regular service – launching daily that interested in enabling the millions for use in space more than a decade earlier. sition of its dedicated spacecraft-manu- prototype of the world’s first spaceliner, flights into space – for the start of 2014. of people who would love to go to space Wearing black pilot’s overalls bear- facturing arm, The Spaceship Company in another giant shed on the other side of Anderson is optimistic about the future: to have the opportunity to do so.” After- ing a winged design and a patch embroi- (corporate motto: “We Build Space- Mojave airport known as Building 75. daily suborbital passenger flights will be fol- wards, he began canvassing people about dered with his name, Sir ships”). The newly painted building Branson and ’ nota- lowed by point-to-point intercontinental the idea. “I said, ‘If you had the chance to emerges from a hangar on the outskirts of behind him is the Final Assembly Inte- bly eccentric founder, , go back travel that will traverse the globe in the time go to space, and were pretty sure it would Mojave Air and Spaceport in California. gration and Test Hangar – or, in the best a long way. Rutan made his reputation it takes to watch an in-flight movie; trips be a return ticket – and you could afford it Above him, the building has been recently acronym-friendly traditions of out of the Earth’s atmosphere will become – how many of you would go?’ And 95 per painted with the Virgin Galactic eye logo. , “Faith” – where the as commonplace as taking a bus. “I hope,” cent of people would stick their hands up.” corbis ): otary As he crosses the concrete apron of the company’s fleet of new vehicles Richard Branson says later, “it’s the begin- In 1995, following a conversation with hangar, he carries under his arm a card- will be put together. Gathered george whitesides ning of a whole new era in space travel.” Buzz Aldrin, Branson began seriously board cutout of the six-seat Virgin space- around Branson on the Tarmac virgin Galactic’s CEO (below) is also a former chief of staff at Nasa. before joining the But before any of that can happen, Virgin exploring the potential for democratising craft, known as SpaceShipTwo. Today is a to have their picture taken are company, whitesides had been one of the early

Galactic will have to build a rocket that flies. space travel. But when his head of special ( R photography lightning-quick corporate meet-and-greet 200 staff from Virgin Galactic, ticket buyers for a trip into space

Passenger space travel has been a staple of sci-fi for almost as long as there have designed to fly vertically into space and back, using been commercial airlines – the prefigur- rotor-tip peroxide jets, the ing of a frictionless future never more Roton atmospheric test perfectly visualised than in the opening vehicle was built in the mojave desert in 1999. Then scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space the most promising concept, Odyssey, where a white-turbaned Pan Am it was a reusable 18-metre stewardess dispenses snacks in zero G, en craft. branson considered it for commercial space route to an orbiting Hilton hotel. And by travel but the company went the time Kubrick’s film was released in bust shortly afterwards 1968, the real Pan American – corporate pioneers who had flown the first transat- lantic and trans-Pacific commercial ser- vices – had already opened a waiting list fizzled away. “I definitely thought that for trips to the Moon. They estimated the one day soon we’d all be doing it,” he says. service would begin no later than 2000, And yet, he says, he could still have made and began issuing numbered member- a pleasure trip into orbit in the late 80s, ship cards for their First Moon Flights before anyone else on Earth. club. It was part corporate optimism, By then, Branson was already one of the born of a confidence in the technology world’s richest men, proprietor of his own of the high frontier, and part publicity airline, and exploring a popular sideline stunt. Galvanised by the Moon landing in daredevil brand-building – transatlan- the following year, 98,000 people world- tic powerboat rides, record-breaking bal- wide eventually signed up; one tried to loon trips – when he took a call from the guarantee his seat by sending a deposit USSR’s ambassador in London. Mikhail cheque for $1 million (£620,000). Gorbachev, the ambassador explained, But the euphoria of Apollo 11 didn’t last had a proposition for him: how would he long. Nasa slashed its lunar-exploration like to become the first tourist in space? programme, and in 1971 a similarly cash- It would require 18 months’ training at strapped Pan Am closed the waiting list; Star City outside Moscow, and came with when the airline finally went bankrupt in a significant catch: “It would cost $50m or 1991, the First Moon Flights club became a something,” Branson says. The price was a mocking footnote to the company’s obitu- problem. “I just felt that to spend that sort ary, a bellwether of fatal corporate hubris. of money going to space, people just might Now 62, his blond mane steadily feel it was a bit of a waste. We did quite a becoming a jaundiced white, Richard lot of charitable work in Africa and so on, Branson still remembers sitting in his and I just felt that the amount of money – parents’ living room, watching Arm- although I might have been able to afford strong and Aldrin walk on the Moon. He it – was just a little bit… gross.” had turned 19 just a few days earlier, and So Branson declined; later, he regretted was one of the generation of starry-eyed it. “I think maybe I should have said yes,” Aquarians who felt cheated by the future he says. “I could probably have justified it when their dreams of space travel for all from a marketing point of view.” And the

0 0 0 384,000 384,000km The Moon

by selling plans for unconven- – and I knew that if anybody could km tional-looking aeroplanes with pull it off, it would be Burt. I was gimmicky names – the VariEZ, determined that when it went into the Long-EZ – that DIY-minded space it had the Virgin brand on it, pilots could build from foam and and if it was successful, then we going to be eligible to fly, because we don’t fibreglass in their garages. But in would take it on to the next stage.” understand too much about the fitness 1986 he became better known as Rutan and Allen, who had no requirements… but if you want to join, we the designer of the Rutan Model interest in running a passenger need $200,000 up front.” 76 Voyager, the first aircraft to fly spaceline and planned simply to The site crashed under the weight of non-stop around the world on a put the spacecraft in the Smithso- responses. “There was a deluge,” says single tank of fuel. When Branson nian Air and Space Museum once it Attenborough. He began receiving cheques began building equipment for his had achieved its objective, agreed from all over the world, and people came to series of trans-oceanic balloon to license the technology to Vir- Notting Hill in person to deliver deposits. flights, beginning with an Atlan- gin. According to Branson, there Early applicants were – necessarily tic crossing by hot-air balloon in was no competition: “Bizarrely,” – very wealthy, and most were keen to 1987, he came out to Mojave for he says, “I think we were the only make sure they were at the head of the advice. “Burt is a genius when it people who put our hands up.” queue to go into space. Seats on the first comes to things such as pressur- On June 21, 2004, 64-year-old Virgin Galactic trips were reserved for ised capsules,” he says. test pilot flew Space- the earliest buyers, their number capped While his record-breaking bal- ShipOne over the Karman Line for at 100, known as the Founders. This pri- loon exploits continued, Bran- the first time. Seven months later, vate club of high-rolling adventur- son’s search for a viable vehicle when Rutan’s rocketplane made the ers would have privileged access to the to take the Virgin name into two flights within a fortnight nec- programme as it developed and, when the space grew more earnest, and he essary to win the X Prize, the Virgin time came, their names would entered and Will Whitehorn began trav- Galactic logo was on its twin tails. into a draw to decide who would fly first. elling the world to look at poten- tial spacecraft. The launch of the X Prize in 1996 (wired 10.09) – which offered ten million dol- Two days before the first X Prize- height of ambition lars (£6.2m) to the first team to qualifying flight, at a press con- virgin galactic will travel 110km up – 10km into space. the moon is another 384,000km put a reusable vehicle capable of ference, Branson announced his away, which is, to scale, approximately 350 carrying passengers, twice, over intention to launch a passenger times the height of this chart the threshold of space – sparked service into space, just as soon an explosion in the number of pri- as he had a vehicle in which to do 110 110km Virgin vate companies hawking tech- it. Tickets would be going on sale Galactic’s maximum planned altitude nologies they claimed could shortly, with the full fare payable be the future of space tourism. immediately as a deposit. Although 100 100km The Karman Line, where passengers Branson and Whitehorn would fully refundable, this required each become eventually look at 50 concepts. potential passenger to put down “Most of them were father-and- $200,000 in advance. Branson said 90 son businesses. So few were try- flights could begin as soon as 2007. ing it in a serious way,” Branson The new company’s first full- 80 says. “But you never quite knew.” time employee was Stephen Atten- In 1999, he returned to the Mojave Flying human beings safely into space is of 13.6 km, shackled beneath the belly of used to burn through a hollow cylinder of borough, a former City investment manager desert to see Rotary Rocket’s Roton con- not easy, and getting them back is harder a B-52 bomber, the dart-shaped aircraft solid rubber, hurling SpaceShipOne into who organised a team of five to put the foun- 70 cept, the most promising scheme yet. still. The goal of the X Prize was to reach saved 50 per cent of the fuel it would oth- space in under two minutes. dations of the company in place. Working Funded by investors including the nov- suborbital space – which begins at the Kar- erwise have needed, before being released In November 2003, Alex Tai, a Vir- from spare desks they had found at the 60 elist Tom Clancy, who had hoped that the man Line, around 100km above sea level. to begin a rocket-powered flight to the edge gin Atlantic captain flying the London- ’s corporate headquarters in km project would “put Nasa out of business”, This is far less costly, in both energy and of space. It then glided back to Earth. But Los Angeles route, was in Mojave. Tai had Notting Hill, the team set up a rudimen- the Roton was a reusable 18-metre rocket money, than reaching Earth orbit. the X-15 also required a computer guidance heard from adventurer Steve Fossett that tary website – a logo, some footage of the with blades, designed to fly ver- Rutan’s inspiration was more elegant, system. Rutan wanted his rocket ship to be Rutan had something exciting in Building X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne flight, and 50 tically into space and back, using rotor- and reached back to technology born before flown entirely by stick and rudder. His solu- 75 (at the time Fossett, Rutan and Branson an application form – to take reservation Nasa existed, with the X series rocket planes tip peroxide jets. Built under contract by tion was the “feather” system, by which his were collaborating on the enquiries. When it went live, Attenborough 40 36.5km Felix Baumgartner’s Scaled Composites, the prototype Roton in which US Air Force test pilots first broke vehicle’s wings could fold up hydraulically GlobalFlyer, which Fossett would fly non- sat back to see what would happen. highest freefall was exceptionally light, but almost impos- the sound barrier, and later tested the in flight, so at re-entry it would fall – slowly stop around the world in 2005). When Rutan “Although we expected to get a lot of 33.5km Highest manned balloon flight sible to control and, even at a maximum boundaries of space. These reached their and with great stability – like a giant and revealed the nearly complete SpaceShipOne, hits,” he says, “we were far less sure about 30 height of 20 metres, flew as if dangled zenith with the X-15. Lifted to a height very expensive shuttlecock. Tai called Will Whitehorn, who reached whether we would find people to do what 15.5km Virgin Galactic’s craft from a thread by an impatient With more than $20m of funding from Branson. “Fuck GlobalFlyer,” Whitehorn we asked. We were saying, ‘Look: we don’t released from mothership giant. Branson thought about it, Microsoft cofounder , Rutan told his boss, “they’re building a spaceship.” know how long this project’s going to last, 20 15.2km Maximum flying height of Concorde but not for very long: “It looked embarked on a programme to build and A few months later, Branson flew in to we don’t know when the product’s going 14km Mean flying quite perilous,” he says. the final view test SpaceShipOne, and the mothership have dinner with Paul Allen and Rutan, at to be delivered; we don’t know what it’s height of passenger jets 10 And in the meantime, Burt the last earthbound sight for passengers designed to carry it to launch altitude, the engineer’s pyramidal house outside going to look like; we don’t really know 8.9km The summit will be the three-kilometre spaceport of Mount Everest Rutan had secretly begun devel- runway that extends from the astronaut WhiteKnightOne. Rutan used a hybrid Mojave. “I was frothing with excitement,” much about what it’s going to be like for oping plans for his own spaceship. lounge out into the new mexico desert design, in which a tank of nitrous oxide was Branson says. “This was a dream come true you on board; we don’t whether you’re 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Back in Mojave, the Scaled Composites better understand how to design a cabin frequent-flyer miles to buy a ticket for space. single part of the journey, taking more than team began work on turning an experimen- for use in space. The rest of the technology Branson announced passenger flights an hour to reach 15km. During this time, tal three-seat rocket ship, which had only – the rocket motor, the feather – could be would launch from New Mexico in 2009. with nothing to do but wait for the moment ever carried a single experienced test pilot scaled up from the prototype. In the sum- When complete, SpaceShipTwo will be of release, the pilots of SpaceShipTwo will and 180kg of undemanding ballast, into a mer of 2005, Attenborough began banking almost three times the size of its experi- talk to the passengers over wireless head- vehicle that could meet the requirements p.xxx p.xxx p.xxx p.xxx $10m worth of deposit cheques. mental predecessor – with a cabin 2.28 sets, and reassure the anxious. “There’s no of the Virgin customer experience. No one whiteknighttwo, The twin-engined after the new system In September the following year, at the metres in diameter and 3.6 metres long, drinks service, no newspapers,” says Dave the mothership turboprop jet is the installation of became necessary had ever done anything remotely like this launch craft, designed to carry the new aluminium- after the fatal US wired NextFest in New York City, Bran- half the size of that in a small business Mackay, the former RAF test pilot and Vir- before, and Matt Stinemetze, the engineer in Scaled SpaceShipTwo – hung lined oxidiser tank, accident that son unveiled a full-size mock-up of Space- jet. But riding in it will be little different gin Atlantic captain who will be in the cock- who become the project manager oversee- Composites’ in the cradle visible the centre of the killed three ShipTwo: a glossy white tube with a delta from the ride that Mike Melvill took when pit for Galactic’s first flights. Building 75 in the between its wings newly configured Scaled Composites ing the new programme, recalls that ini- Mojave desert – to launch altitude propulsion system technicians in 2007 wing, reclining seats sculpted into soft he became the first private pilot in space. Once released from the mothership, the tial discussions were very general indeed. curves and a total of 12 portholes for passen- After a take-off tethered beneath the moth- spaceship drops away to a safe distance, “Just a lot of rough order-of-magnitude gers. The ceremony was attended by Buzz ership – WhiteKnightTwo, a twin-fuselage where the pilot ignites the rocket motor, guesswork,” he says. Why not build a big Aldrin and Alan Watts, a Virgin Atlantic pas- turbojet with a 42-metre wingspan – the using two cockpit switches. The first arms rocket? A small one? One that would carry senger from Watford who had saved enough ascent to launch altitude will be the longest the system; the second opens a ball valve, 11 passengers? Fifteen? Twenty? They also considered building several more Space- ShipOnes, to send passengers into space two at a time. But the prototype was a crude Subject to delays research aircraft, built to prove simply that richard branson had hoped to offer it was possible to get into space cheaply, and galactic travel to commercial it suffered from several potential “single passengers by 2007 but now promises flights in spaceshiptwo by early 2014 point failures”. “If one bolt falls off and you die,” Stinemetze explains, “that’s a single point of failure. There were things that you probably would’ve done differently if you’re going to carry Angelina [Jolie].” releasing a fine mist of liquid nitrogen Stinemetze – who has a shaved head, and dioxide into the throat of the engine, and when we first meet is wearing a single ear- fires a failsafe ring of three electrical ignit- ring and a “I went so fast my hair blew off” ers. With an unthrottled shriek, the rock- T-shirt – joined Scaled immediately after etplane shudders to full thrust within a graduating in aeronautical engineering in tenth of a second, its nose pointed straight 1998. A licensed pilot, whenever he refers to up to where the air thins towards the edge the needs of Virgin Galactic’s paying passen- of space. The acceleration is hard to imag- gers in describing the design process, he has ine: at the instant of ignition, the pas- a habit of using the names of the vehicle’s sengers are thrown back into their seats most well-known celebrity ticket-holders with the full force of 3Gs; Melvill says as a sardonic shorthand: “You don’t want to it feels like being hurled against a brick take Angelina and tumble her around leav- wall. It’s 12 seconds to the sound barrier, ing the atmosphere,” he’ll say. “Is Angelina 30 to Mach 2; within a minute, the space- really going to shimmy down a rope ladder craft is travelling at 4,800kph. “You’ll feel when some emergency happens?” all the effects of what an astronaut goes The team soon realised that the commer- through going to orbit,” says Steve Isa- cial needs of Virgin Galactic and the expec- kowitz, Galactic’s chief technical officer, tations of its ticket holders necessitated the an aerospace engineer and former admin- design of an entirely new vehicle. It would istrator at Nasa. “The noise, the vibration, have to carry enough passengers to bring the acceleration, are almost the same as if the individual seat price down relatively you were sitting there in the quickly, but not so many that they would trying to go up to orbit.” be competing with one another for the best In those few seconds, the sky beyond the view. From London, Stephen Attenborough cockpit window tumbles through the spec- canvassed his early customers on what they trum of blues from the rich azure of south- would like. “They wanted to get out of their ern California to navy, indigo and then seats in zero gravity, and they put very high – abruptly – it turns black. “Not grey, black,” priority on seeing Earth from space,” he Melvill says. “As black as black paint.” says. Neither of these things was easy in the At around 80 seconds, the pilot cuts cramped cabin of SpaceShipOne. the engine, and the rocketplane imme- So the new vehicle would be designed to diately enters zero gravity. The pas- take two pilots and six passengers. And it sengers have now become astronauts. would have large windows; a lot of them. Releasing their seatbelts, they float Rutan dispatched Stinemetze and the around the cabin, and gaze at the view: design team to Los Angeles to take a dozen 1,600km from horizon to horizon, the parabolic zero-G flights in a specially curvature of the Earth subtle but clear, converted Boeing 727, so that they could the fine blue line of the atmosphere

0 0 0 easily visible against the blackness of afternoon in July 2007, he saw the cloud of particular. In his long career of devel- space. On-board cameras will capture dust off to the east, and knew something oping experimental aircraft and sell- every second of the experience, accord- bad had happened. A few minutes later, ing home-build plans to amateurs, the ing to Virgin Galactic’s Mark Butler, who Chuck Coleman, a structural engineer who designer had always said his work had is leading the company’s preparations had gone out to the Scaled rocket-test site never been involved in a single fatal- to open Spaceport America in the New earlier that afternoon, staggered into Mel- ity. Now there were three in one day. In Mexico desert: “It will be the most pho- vill’s office. Long shards of carbon fibre the days after the accident, the usually tographed event of their lives,” he says. protruded from his body, like arrows. “You aridly technical Scaled website was filled It will also be one of the shortest. At need to get some help out there,” he said. with heartfelt memorial messages. Rutan the top of a parabolic arc, the rocket- He was in shock. “He didn’t even know he stopped work on SpaceShipTwo while plane will spend only four minutes in had those things in him,” Melvill says. the engineers tried to discover what had space before it then begins to fall back Although it took place on the rocket- gone wrong; the programme was even- down to Earth. The pilot positions the trial range, out among the bunkers at tually shut down for a year. A Califor- “feather” for-re-entry, and the six pas- the end of the runway originally used for nia State investigation into the accident sengers will fold their seats flat to enable ammunition storage when Mojave was fined Scaled for failing to observe cor- them to cope with the 4-5Gs of accel- a Marine base, the test that day didn’t rect workplace practices, but was una- eration that they’ll encounter when involve rocketry or explosives. The pro- ble to explain what had happened. Soon returning to Earth’s atmosphere. After a pulsion engineers from Scaled were afterwards, Rutan was hospitalised with 15-minute glide, they will be back heart problems, and stepped down from on the desert runway from which the head of the company he had founded. they had taken off. Scaled launched its own investiga- The trip sounds fabulous. Excit- virgin’s first tion into the accident, calling in aero- ing, but familiar enough in outline Dave Mackay (right), a former RAF test space experts from Lockheed, Northrop pilot and Virgin Atlantic captain who – the anticipation, the plunge, the will almost certainly be in the cockpit and Boeing. But they, too, failed to iso- rush of adrenalin, the aftermath for virgin Galactic’s inaugural flights late a single cause of the accident. So, to – to seem routine, like an extrav- prevent anything similar ever happening agantly costly rollercoaster ride, again, the engineers at Scaled were forced perhaps, or a very long bun- to tear down and redesign the entire pro- gee jump. And Virgin Galactic justifia- experimenting with a new valve on the pulsion system of SpaceShipTwo, and bly boasts of its experience in passenger oxidiser tank for SpaceShipTwo, a two- replace the carbon-fibre oxidiser tank transport, its excellent safety record over metre sphere of carbon fibre designed to with one lined with aluminium. Noth- almost 30 years of flying people around hold 5,500kg of liquid nitrous oxide under ing like it had ever been made before. the world. But rocketplanes are not airlin- 800 atmospheres of pressure. The test While the construction and testing of ers, and going into space is not like flying was simply to open the valve, and let the WhiteKnightTwo continued quickly, and across the Atlantic. NO2 escape: a “cold flow” test that Scaled the plane made its first flight at the end of Although it’s regarded as a tested proto- engineers had done before. 2008, the SpaceShip team began explor- type for passenger travel, SpaceShipOne Seventeen men were present; before ing five different engine and fuel configu- made a total of only six powered flights the test began, six retired to a control rations for the rocket at the same time. before being hung in the Smithsonian; on post more than 100 metres away, pro- The work took years. “It set us way back,” two of those occasions Mike Melvill expe- tected by banked earth and a shipping says Stinemetze. “We’ve struggled a lot.” rienced failures he thought would kill him. container, from where they could watch Virgin Galactic’s estimated launch date The engineers of Scaled Composites have the test on closed-circuit TV. The rest of for passenger service slipped back, from designed SpaceShipTwo to be as simple as the team remained behind and watched 2009 to 2011. The total estimated costs of possible, and are pursuing an incremental the tank from behind a chainlink fence, the programme, first calculated at $20m, testing programme to gradually expand its less than ten metres away, as the valve rose to between $300m and $400m – at capabilities. “It has all the refinements and was opened. Seconds later, a sudden reac- least 15 times the initial estimate. lessons learned from SpaceShipOne,” says tion caused the bottom of the tank to rup- At the end of 2010, Rutan announced Matt Stinemetze. “It’s a much, much bet- ture with such explosive force that the his retirement. In April 2011, after 36 ter aeroplane in every respect.” The idea, decompressing gas blew 15 centimetres years in Mojave, he packed up his belong- he says, is to make it into an aeroplane that of concrete off the pad beneath the test ings and left for a ranch in Idaho. flies like a rocket, not the other way around. stand, scattering fragments of rock and In May last year, the US Federal Avia- But it remains an experimental technology. carbon fibre in a lethal arc. Two men were tion Authority granted Scaled an experi- Something could still go wrong. killed instantly; a third died in hospital of mental launch permit for SpaceShipTwo. his injuries; three others were hospital- Galactic CEO George Whitesides – the ised for weeks. After several years away, former chief of staff at Nasa, who before propulsion engineer Charles May had joining the company had been among the Mike Melvill was sitting in his office in only just returned to work at Scaled that early ticket buyers for a trip into space – Building 75 when he heard the bang from week. His friend Luke Colby had watched announced that powered-flight testing out beyond the aeroplane graveyard. At from the control post as May died. “It would begin before the end of 2012. On first, he thought little of it: Mojave lies in was the worst day of my life,” says Colby, a trip to promote to Poland a supersonic flight corridor, and he was a Scaled propulsion engineer. in October, Richard Branson, in appar- used to sonic booms echoing in the sky The deaths in Mojave were the first ent frustration, told a group of students overhead. But when he went outside on fatalities of the commercial spaceflight in Warsaw he had given up counting to the flight line, just after lunchtime one industry. The accident shook Rutan in the days until he could go into space.

0 0 0 In the years since the Virgin Galactic brand was first entered into the books, the mar- ket for privately funded space travel – New Space, as its proponents like to call it – has become increasingly crowded. Mojave-based XCOR aerospace – formed by engineers from the failed Rotary Rocket programme – has begun taking reservations for suborbital flights aboard its planned liq- uid-powered rocketplane, Lynx. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is designing its own and capsules, and in October last year success- fully fulfilled the first part of a $1.6bn con- tract with Nasa when the Dragon X rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral and deliv- ered supplies to the International Space Sta- tion; Musk expects to begin manned orbital flights in 2015. And in Texas, Jeff Bezos has been working in secrecy on – his own programme, aiming to do for space travel what Amazon did for online retailing – for more than a decade. But Branson is confident that Galac- tic is years ahead of anyone else. “In this field we don’t really have any competitors. Land based take-off – they can never com- pete with us for people going into space,” construction hangar Matt Stinemetze (right), who’s been with scaled since he graduated in aeronautical engineering

rival rocketry

XCOR Aerospace the size of a private jet, XCOR’s Lynx rocketplane will take a single passenger on a sub-orbital flight for $95,000. the vehicle is liquid-powered, meaning that the engines are re-usable and burn cleanly

SpaceX Blue Origin Elon Musk’s company Jeff Bezos has been SpaceX is the world’s working on his first privately owned suborbital space enterprise to have flight programme for delivered supplies to 12 years and, in 2009, the International was awared $3.7bn by . Musk’s NASA. There was a ambition is greater: successful test in to build a colony on October 2012 but, as Mars. One-way tickets yet, no date has been will cost $500,000 set for manned flight

0 0 0 he says. “And spaceship companies where people have to parachute back to Earth – that’s the old technology. I may be being naïve – there may be somebody doing some- thing very secretive which we don’t know about – but my guess is that we are five or six years ahead of any competitor.” In July 2012, Virgin Galactic announced its own commercial satellite-launch- ing programme, LauncherOne – a small air-launched rocket carried beneath WhiteKnightTwo designed to boost small payloads into low Earth orbit for a tiny fraction of the cost of a conventional sys- tem. Next, Branson has plans to replace the hybrid engine in SpaceShipTwo with a liquid rocket motor, with the intention of making quick suborbital flights far cheaper and far more frequent. And after that, he wants Virgin Galactic to get into the business of using rocketplanes for point-to-point travel on Earth, escaping the atmosphere to shave hours off intercon- tinental journey times. But that will require a vehicle that can withstand the speed, tem- peratures and stresses of orbital flight, something SpaceShipTwo could never achieve. “If we can get people from New York to Australia in a couple of hours within 20 years, I’d be really pleased,” he says. “But it’s not going to be cheap to develop.” Whenever it finally happens, Branson says that the day he climbs into Space- ShipTwo for its inaugural passenger flight will be the most exciting of his life. He hopes not only to give birth to a new industry, but to transform humanity’s relationship with its own planet. Branson believes that democratising the experience may help save the planet. “We can send enormous quan- tities of people into space who come back determined to make a difference.” On a dazzling winter afternoon in Mojave, may, after all, be possible for the world’s Like Elon Musk, Branson dreams of send- the engines of WhiteKnightTwo whine first commercial space-line to begin service ing human beings to Mars. “One way. The to a halt outside Building 75, as it taxis in from Spaceport America within a year. In a cost of a return trip is going to be horren- from a crew training flight, Dave Mackay nearby hangar at Mojave, The Spaceship dous,” he says. “There will be plenty of vol- at the controls. Inside, a shop crew labours Company has already begun construction unteers.” He’s already conducted some beneath the belly of SpaceShipTwo, fitting of the second and mothership research. Just before April 1, 2008, Bran- the giant oxidiser tank for the new propul- that will come off the production line. son and Larry Page – after a night in a bar sion system. Glued directly to the skin of In the meantime, $200,000 tickets keep – announced the formation of a new joint the spacecraft, the tank runs more than half selling. At the beginning of 2012, Ashton venture, “Virgle: The Adventure of Many the length of the fuselage, and has taken Kutcher became the 500th person to sign Lifetimes”, accepting candidates to colonise months to install. “This is huge. The biggest up, joining Stephen Hawking, Philippe the Red Planet. The proposal was revealed deal we’ve had on the programme in years,” Starck and Dallas star Victoria Principal on as an April Fool a few hours later. “We had Stinemetze says. “All the plumbing has been the list of passengers. But not all the celeb-

photography (this page): todd antony todd (this page): photography hundreds of people apply,” Branson says. run – it’s all built. So it’s kind of done.” rities so far reported to be planning sight- Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship is, seeing trips in space have reserved tickets. at last, ready for powered flights. Virgin has been very discreet about the The remaining testing will not be full list; all it will reveal is that, in the inter-

opposite: scaled’s chief aerodynamicist, completed quickly, but the final ests of democracy, Branson has insisted jim tighe, who designed spaceshiptwo to be goal is now in sight. “You start that nobody will get a complimentary ride, a roomier improvement on that phase with the rocket motor no matter how famous they are. � systems, you end up by going into Right: London-based dave clark, astronaut relations at virgin galactic (left of picture), and space,” Stinemetze says. If eve- Adam Higginbotham wrote about empathic Commercial director stephen attenborough rything goes according to plan, it technology in 11.12

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