The Future of Space Tourism with Richard Branson (Patreon)

***Please Note: This is only Matt's portion of the script. Sir Richard's interview segments have not been transcribed********

The private space-race has been on for a while now.  The attention has been on Space-X and Blue Origin with their reusable rockets. But there’s one private space program that’s been doing things a little differently. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic isn’t building rockets at all – it’s building spaceships. And I got to sit down and talk to him about it.

Amid the loud rivalry of between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, amid the extravagance of self-landing rockets and … other displays, Virgin Galactic achieved something no other private space company ever has – in 2014 it became the first to put an actual person in space on board its SpaceShipOne – turning its pilot into the world’s first private astronaut. And then, on February 22nd, the VSS Unity, reached space in a sub-orbital flight carrying the first-ever passenger-astronaut on a private spacecraft.

The attention of space-nerds everywhere, long distracted by the self-landing rocket club, suddenly turned back to Virgin Galactic. Questions abound! Is there a future in these strange, air-launch spaceships? Why is Richard Branson building spaceships at all? What other mad schemes lie in the future? And, most importantly, when can WE go up? Obviously these are questions probably best answered by Richard Branson.

Now in classic eccentric billionaire style, Branson spends much of his time on his private island in the British Virgin Islands. By strange chance, though a series of … unusual events, I found myself on that island. It’s a long story for another time. But I took the opportunity to sit Sir Richard down and blast him with questions. This was a little impromptu, so please bare with the audio.

BRANSON INTERVIEW

Wanting to go into space is a pretty good reason to build a spaceship. But Richard followed with what sounds closer to his true motivation:

BRANSON INTERVIEW

This is a stark difference to the motivation of Musk and Bezos, who have talked many times about the importance of an interplanetary humanity – they want to colonize other worlds. Branson, it seems, wants to save this one. Sounds noble, but if you’ve been following Virgin Galactic at all you’ll know that its business model is to sell tickets for rides into space.

BRANSON INTERVIEW

Let’s take a look at what humanity’s first private spaceship looks like and why it might be the solution to affordable space access. This is the VSS Unity on its second trip to space on February 22nd. Unity is dropped at 15,000 meters by its carrier, White Knight, after which it blasts its rocket engine, sending it into a sub-orbital flight. Unity’s first two space flights took it to around 83 and 90 km respectively, above the 80km definition used by the US, but below the 100km Karman line – an alternate definition of the space boundary. But Unity will is designed to hit 110 km in standard operational mode. After a few minutes in space, the craft reenters and lands itself. It never reaches orbital velocity, so its low-speed reentry is less fraught than, say the space shuttle.

Unity is the second SpaceShipTwo class space plane. The first – Enterprise – was lost, along with one of its pilots, in a tragic crash in 2014. The previous generation – SpaceShipOne – was actually the first private piloted craft to cross the Kaman line in 2004.

There is some incredible engineering genius behind these craft – most of which is thanks to aerospace engineer Burt Rutan. But the key innovation is the whole air-launch thing. It’s worth a quick word on

Obviously the spaceplane itself needs less fuel that a craft launched from the ground. But why is air-launching from a plane more efficient than using booster rockets? The real key is that planes are more efficient than rockets at low altitude. As well as a combustible fuel as an energy source, rockets need to carry an oxidant to burn that fuel and a reaction mass – that’s what you blast out to propel the rocket forward. Planes, on the other hand, can use air as both oxidant and reaction mass – they only need to carry the energy supply, which is usually combustible fuel but could also, eventually, be electricity. In addition, an air-launch craft can be optimized for the low pressure of that altitude, rather than have to operate at a range of pressures.

Whether air-launch can beat out reusable rockets for actually putting things into orbit remains to be seen. But the technique is looking great for sub-orbital travel. This is what Richard mean when he says point-to-point travel. These space-kissing trajectories could one day allow us to travel half way across the globe in a couple of hours.

And perhaps in the future everyone who travels overseas will also become an astronaut.  But I’m less patient than that. When do WE get to go to space? Well, Richard Branson?

BRANSON INTERVIEW

So there you have it. Maybe 25 years, earlier if you get rich. Richard Branson is 68 and has waited this long. I guess we can hold out. OK, so we have sub-orbital joy rides and saving the world by improving our access to space. But what about the far future? Richard shared a pretty unique vision with us:

BRANSON INTERVIEW

There you have it. SIR Richard Branson’s long quest to himself and, before too long, many of the rest of us into space is reaching its fruition, with lofty goals ahead.
Branson has said he’ll go up in July, and while the first paying passengers aren’t yet scheduled, presumably they’ll follow when it’s as safe as these things can be. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is hot on Richard Branson's heals. On March 2nd, Space-X's Dragon 2 spacecraft made its first successful trip to space - and not on a sub-orbital trajectory. It docked with the international space station. This is the first private spacecraft designed to carry humans to make it into true orbit. Now Dragon 2 didn't have passengers on this test, but in July it will.

The private space race is heating up. It’s a hell of a time to be alive – watching humanity’ first tentative steps off the Earth into the fringes of space time.