The spaceship VSS SPACE Enterprise on a ODYSSEY 2011 test glide back to earth. It can carry six passengers WANT TO BE AN ASTRONAUT? FOR 1000 EUROS PER MINUTE, YOU CAN JOIN JEAN RIES AND OTHERS AND BUY A... BY TIM BOUQUET 1234567890 TICKET TO RIDE 1234567890 SPACE ODYSSEY 2011 weightlessness at 110km in suborbital flight as soon as the end of 2012. In the 50 years since Yuri Gagarin sped away from the earth in a tiny capsule on April 12, 1961, some 520 s a successful business- men and women from 38 countries man who develops real have followed him into space. Virgin estate in Luxembourg, Jean Ries can aims to launch more than 500 astro- Aafford to fly his own single-engine, nauts a year. “I will be the first from four-seater. The 51-year-old father of Luxembourg,” Ries says with pride. four, who has been flying since the But Virgin is not using conventional age of 15, has also founded a charity ground rocketry. It will launch VSS that gives people in wheelchairs the Enterprise at high altitude from a chance to experience the exhilaration revolutionary mothership called VMS of piloting a plane and is setting up Eve. It has two identical fuselages set Luxembourg’s first aviation museum. wide apart and joined by a 42.6 metre Ries with a model “Flying is my grand passion,” he wingspan, making it the largest all- of VMS Eve. The reusable spaceship says, but it has been a passion with carbon-composite aircraft ever built. is in the middle something missing. “As a nine-year- Piloted from the starboard fuselage, old I watched Neil Armstrong and it is four times as strong as steel but Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon in only a quarter the weight and can AeroSpace Training and Research ramming me back into my seat. We 1969 on TV. Ever since I have wanted carry a payload of around 16,000kg. Center (NASTAR), billed as “the clos- reached 3,800km/h in three seconds.” That payload est experience on Earth to an actual He felt a huge weight from his is the 18.2m- space flight.” head to his toes. The gravity dial told EVER SINCE I WATCHED NEIL long reusable Strapped into the simulator cock- him was pulling 4G, making his body “ ARMSTRONG AND BUZZ ALDRIN spaceship VSS pit, he was wired up by medics who four times its usual weight. He began WALKING ON THE MOON, I HAVE E n t e r p r i s e , would monitor him. “You can stop to flex his muscles, as he had been which will be this at any time,” they told him. No taught, to keep his blood vessels open, WANTED TO GO INTO SPACE.” carried to more way, he thought. Sealed in, he heard preventing tunnel vision and avoiding than 15,000m, the “pilot”: “We have reached our blacking out. to go into space.” where it will blast off with six passen- launch altitude.” Ries could now see As he headed for 110km, Ries was Now he has his chance. Jean Ries gers and two pilots at four times the the curvature of the Earth and the sky captivated, not only by space in front is one of the first 100 people who speed of sound to beyond the Kármán above darkening from blue to purple of him, but by the images on his aft have signed up to be astronauts on line at 100km, where space officially to black. camera view screen. business magnate Richard Branson’s begins. “Then I felt the spaceship drop as it “Seeing California way below, Virgin Galactic, the world’s first As test flights have continued was released by the mothership.” disappearing at Mach 3, is pretty phe- commercial spaceline. Subject to its apace, Ries and the other pioneers “Firing sequence starts in 3, 2, 1... nomenal.” test-flight programme winning a com- have headed for Philadelphia and two We have G.” You don’t have to be Top Gun-fit to mercial licence, Ries could escape the days’ training in the STS-400 Space “I was now being pushed up in be a Virgin astronaut, says Galactic’s 1234567890 Earth’s atmosphere and experience Training Simulator at the National PHOTO, PREVIOUS SPREAD: © VIRGIN GALACTIC a rapid vertical climb, the G-force commercial director Stephen Atten- [[1L]] readersdigest.de XX/XX readersdigest.de XX/XX [[2R]] 1234567890 SPACE ODYSSEY 2011 borough. “We have rigorous medical cently put at around £3 billion, started checks, but we are not going to be out as an entrepreneur during the subjecting them to the kind of G-force late-1960s heyday of the Apollo mis- that jet pilots experience. Of the 100 sions. we have trained, only two have we During the Glasnost era, Branson had to say no to.” says that Mikhail Gorbachev asked One thing they do not hear on a him if he would like to buy a seat on NASTAR “flight” is the pilot say- Soyuz to go to the Mir Space Station Clockwise from top: Branson waves ing, “You are now free to leave your as the world’s first space tourist. The from VMS Eve; seats.” The centrifuge cannot simu- collapse of the Soviet Union and an mothership and late weightlessness. That will have asking price of $50 million put paid spaceship fly over to wait until the real thing, when the to that. Spaceport America rocket engine stops and, in the silence Early this century, Branson met an on Oct. 22, 2010; Rutan inside the of space, the six astronauts ease out of American aerospace engineer called spaceship, still their seats to float free with views of Burt Rutan. Branson discovered that under construction the Earth from 12 supersize windows. Rutan was building a spacecraft in the After five weightless minutes, they corner of his small fac- will return to their seats and Enter- tory in the Mojave Desert prise will glide back to Earth using in California. He was out revolutionary pivoting wings to slow to win the $10 million An- and control its re-entry trajectory, sari X Prize for the first making it not just a Mach 3 rocketship privately financed craft to but also the world’s highest-altitude go into space. glider. Rutan’s SpaceShipOne Enterprise made its maiden was made of light but manned solo glide back to Earth in very strong carbon com- October 2010, released from a height posites and would be of 13,700m. launched at altitude from In May 2011 it demonstrated its its identically fabricated unique “feathered” re-entry configu- twin-fuselage mothership, ration for the first time. After landing WhiteKnightOne. safely, 11 minutes and five seconds af- Rutan landed the X ter its release at more than 15,600m, Prize in 2004 and Branson saw “the paying customers. nauts. Today 450 have paid deposits of pilot Pete Siebold proclaimed it “a test future of commercial space travel. He The following year, Virgin Galac- more than $58 million, with another pilot’s dream.” Next up is to fire the had made an aircraft that was afford- tic opened for bookings. Tickets were 80,000 registering their desire to go rocket’s engine to take it into space. able and safe.” priced at $200,000 for a 150-minute into space. As it soared to 100km, Space- trip, but Jean Ries didn’t need con- In October 2010, Branson joined his LIKE JEAN RIES, Richard Branson ShipOne bore not only a pilot, but vincing. “I paid my deposit and friend Buzz Aldrin and 30 future as- was inspired by the lunar landings. also Virgin’s logo. Sponsor Branson became a founder member.” Within tronauts in the remote desert of New The chairman of the Virgin Group had done a deal: Rutan would now six months, Virgin had taken more Mexico. Appearing gracefully out of 1234567890 of companies, whose wealth was re- build him a larger spaceship to take PHOTOS: © VIRGIN GALACTIC than $11 million from would-be astro- the blue, the sleek twin fuselages of [[1L]] readersdigest.de XX/XX readersdigest.de XX/XX [[2R]] 1234567890 SPACE ODYSSEY 2011 that “space is Virgin senger at a time. “With a turnaround down to under three hours. “It’s the territory”, others are similar to a conventional aircraft, we next big quantum leap for commercial entering the race. can do five flights a day,” Mol says. air travel,” Jean Ries says. The Lynx will take off from a run- IN APRIL 2011, 50 way, but then pitch instantly into years to the month an 80° climb, before gliding back to after Gagarin became Earth. “We know the rocket works,” the first spaceman, Mol says. “It has done 88 test flights Space Expedition Cu- in aeroplanes. All they have to do now raçao (SXC) opened is build the spacecraft around it. We for business. It aims to should be able to start full test flights take paying customers early in 2012.” Rendering of the Lynx rocketship, from January 2014 in a However, unlike Virgin’s astro- due to start test rocketship called the nauts, SXC’s space travellers will not flights in 2012 Lynx, being developed be able to leave their seats. “There in California. is no room in the Lynx to float,” Mol the mothership (named VMS Eve af- SXC’s Dutch founders include re- says, “but they will be alongside the ter Branson’s mother), carrying VSS tired Lieutenant General Ben Droste, pilot for the best view in space.” Enterprise between them, touched 56, the former commander-in-chief of SXC business-plan target is 1,000 down on the new 3,000m spaceway the Royal Netherlands Air Force, and flights a year by 2020.