READY, FIRE, AIM: Space, the Final Tourism Frontier

I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth… To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do…

— from Sir Richard Branson’s Twitter account, July 11, 2021.

About a decade ago, businessman and billionaire Richard Branson was dubbed ‘Knight of the British Empire’ at an investiture in Buckingham Palace, and thus became ‘Sir Richard Branson’. I imagine that was an interesting experience… having a razor-sharp sword bounced first on one shoulder, and then the other… within inches of your juggler vein. The sword had once belonged to King George VI, when, as the Duke of York, he was Colonel of the Scots Guards. It was wielded on this occasion, however, by Charles Prince of Wales.

Fortunately, the 5-minute ceremony went off without a hitch, and Sir Richard lived to tell the tale.

How did the experience compare with Sir Richard’s 5-minute flight into ‘space’ on July 11, 2021? Perhaps the flight will figure more dramatically in his memory? There are literally hundreds of British subjects who get knighted every year. But Sir Richard appears to have been the first billionaire to fly into ‘space’.

Sir Richard Branson started a company called Virgin as a mail order record retailer in 1970, and then founded Virgin Records. After the first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, released ‘Tubular Bells’, Virgin Records went on to sign household names from the Sex Pistols to The Rolling Stones. There are now more than 40 Virgin companies worldwide, in over 35 countries.

Here is a photo of the Unity 22 spaceship, moments after it began its 5-minute ‘space’ excursion. As we see, this was also the first time a corporate logo made the trip into ‘space’.

You may have noticed, that I am putting the word ‘space’ in parentheses for a reason, which will be explained momentarily.

Why Sir Richard chose New Mexico as the location for Spaceport America, I’ve not been able to discover. We have plenty of wide open spaces here in Colorado, and arguably, more tourists.

And we love mountain bikes. Sir Richard rode a mountain bike (similar to the type we love here in Colorado) to the spaceport on the morning of his flight. He was escorted by two white Range Rovers. Range Rover, a sub-brand of British car manufacturer Jaguar-Land Rover, helped sponsor the flight on July 11, as did the State of New Mexico. (Governor Polis, have you been sleeping?)

Like all of us, Sir Richard seems to be concerned about climate change… and riding his bike to the spaceport, on the morning of his flight, no doubt helped to compensate for the millions of tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere, so far, by Virgin Atlantic Airline, and now, by the space vehicles built by Virgin Galactic.

Unlike the more utilitarian spacecraft designed by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which use the old-fashioned rocket-based system developed by the Nazis during World War II, Sir Richard’s spacecraft uses the ‘mothership” system — a large three-winged airplane that carries the Unity spacecraft up to an altitude of about 46,000 feet (about 8 miles high, for any ‘Byrds’ fans in the audience), and then releases the fancy ‘Buck Rogers’ looking airplane/rocket to continue blasting its way to a height of about 50 miles above the earth’s surface.

When NASA was handling the space excursions here in the US, they liked the idea of compact ‘space capsules’. That worked okay for scientific/military purposes, when the pilots were used to the cramped accommodations in military aircraft. But we have moved well beyond science, folks. Space is now the final tourism frontier. And tourists — especially, very wealthy tourists — don’t want to be crammed into a space capsule. They want a luxurious experience inside a craft that reminds them of their private Lear Jet. Lots of windows. Room to float around in a First Class Cabin at Zero Gravity, without bumping into one another.

And maybe, a half-minute Twitter video to share with friends?

(They actually did bump into one another. But no one was injured.)

Sir Richard pulled out all the stops on July 11, with a well-produced streaming video production — which you can view here — co-hosted by comedian Stephen Colbert and ‘Structural Operations Engineer and Co-Host” Veronica McGowen. Mr. Colbert was mildly funny; Ms. McGowen delivered a compelling, gushing sales pitch for future Virgin Galactic tourism flights.

The Virgin tourist transport reached an altitude of of about 183,000 feet on July 11, or about 53 miles above sea level, before slowly flipping itself over and beginning its descent back to earth. At that point, Sir Richard was expected to broadcast a message to us earthlings, but due to technical difficulties, the billionaire was not able to share his feelings. So we had to use our imaginations.

Did Sir Richard and his three fellow tourists really go to ‘space’? Well, yes and no. Depends on who you ask. International law defines ‘space’ as beginning at the altitude where a conventional aircraft can no longer be supported by the atmosphere. That’s about 62 miles up. But the US military defines ‘space’ as starting at 50 miles up. (No one knows why.) So according to the US military, Sir Richard and his Unity 22 team can now claim the title of ‘astronaut’. (So long as they remain in the US.)

So, then: Billionaire Astronaut Sir Richard Branson.

To actually leave the earth’s atmosphere, you have to go more than 600 miles up. But who’s counting?

Reportedly, over 600 people have already reserved their seats on future Virgin Galactic flights, with a reported initial price tag of $250,000 to secure a spot. No doubt the price will come down, eventually.

Looking at the future of ‘space flight’ from a local perspective, this successful little excursion bodes well for Pagosa Springs. We would very much like to see some of our summertime tourists shot off into space.

Or at least, what they call, space.

Louis Cannon

Louis Cannon

Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.