by Sue Nelson
Wally had bought her $200,000 Virgin Galactic ticket in 2010, using money from her parents’ inheritance. ‘They came to the house here three times to make sure that was what I wanted to do.’ Like the actions of all pioneers, it was a leap of faith. But that wasn’t the only ticket she had bought. ‘I bought several from other companies but don’t remember the names. They didn’t return the money, and that was the end of that.’
After checking some newspaper archives, I discovered reports saying she had bought tickets from the Sierra Nevada Corporation, the Interorbital Systems Corporation, and one in the 1990s from Zegrahm Space Voyagers, who later in 1999 merged with Space Adventures. At that time, these were the only two companies that offered private trips into space. ‘That’s not true, honey.’
In fact, Space Voyagers had helped Dennis Tito become the world’s first space tourist. Space Voyagers continues to act as a facilitator for those who want to undergo astronaut training – and have deep pockets – but the main three companies that intend to offer shorter tastes of space are: Blue Origin, set up by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Elon Musk’s Space-X; and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
Most planned commercial flights are to the bottom range of Low Earth Orbit, a designation which covers orbits up to 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometres) above sea level. The International Space Station, for instance, orbits the Earth at around 250 miles (400 kilometres). Most scientific satellites also operate in Low Earth Orbit. The spaceplanes are usually sub-orbital, too, meaning they will fly outside the Earth’s atmosphere, up into space, switch off the engines for a period of weightlessness, and then fall back down again for a controlled return flight, rather than going into an orbit around the Earth.
NASA and the US Air Force define space as 50 miles (80.5 kilometres) to award astronaut status. The USAF, for instance, assigned some of the pilots of its experimental x-15 planes official astronaut status for surpassing this altitude. The officially adopted boundary beyond Earth to cross into space, however, is 62 miles (100 kilometres) above sea level, and is known as the Karman Line, after the Hungarian-American aeronautical engineer Theodore Von Kármán.
Newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s often referred to Von Kármán as the ‘father of the supersonic age’ and the ‘Einstein of aviation’. After gaining an international reputation in Europe for his research, Von Kármán became head of the new Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in 1929. He founded the US Institute of Aeronautical Sciences three years later and, in 1936, helped students set up a rocket test facility a few miles away. This area eventually became the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Later President Kennedy would award him the country’s first National Medal of Science.
Based on his calculations, the Karman Line was an altitude where the atmosphere became too thin to support flight, since any aircraft would have to fly faster than orbital velocity – the minimum velocity required to go into orbit – to get enough aerodynamic lift to stay airborne. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale adopted this definition in the 1950s, although, ironically considering Von Kármán became a US citizen, the US did not adopt the definition, and uses its own definitions of space. Nevertheless, it is considered a benchmark by many commercial spaceflight companies.
On 21 June 2004, a spaceplane called SpaceShipOne made history when it became the first privately developed vehicle to fly into space, 124 metres above the Karman Line. Built by aerospace designer Burt Rutan’s company Scaled Composites, and backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, SpaceShipOne seated one pilot and two passengers. When it repeated this feat within two weeks, the spaceplane officially won the Ansari X Prize competition, which had offered $10 million to the first non-government vehicle to fly into space. It was funded by brothers Amir and Hamid Ansari and the latter’s wife Anousheh, who was the first female space tourist.
Five years later, Virgin Galactic backed Rutan’s next development: SpaceShipTwo – which Wally will fly on. It has been designed to take two pilots and six passengers above the Karman Line of 62 miles (100 kilometres) and is a reusable spaceplane, like the retired Space Shuttle. Unlike the Space Shuttle it will be sub-orbital. It will not go into orbit around the Earth, and will not require a rocket to launch it into space either. A four-engine aircraft called WhiteKnightTwo, whose dual-fuselage design resembles two planes connected together by a central shared wing, will carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of fifteen kilometres (nine miles).
After SpaceShipTwo is released, the spaceplane will then fire its rocket engines, producing an acceleration of 3.5 G. All those on board will then experience G forces that make them feel three-and-a-half times their body weight. Once in space, passengers can unbuckle their seat belts – assuming Wally has fastened hers in the first place – and will experience several minutes of weightlessness. They can also enjoy the beauty of space through one of its seventeen windows, before the spaceplane returns to Earth using the shuttlecock ‘feathering’ system. The rudders are ‘feathered’ by turning ninety degrees to give the spaceplane better control through the atmosphere. They then reconfigure into a glide position to land on a runway at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.
Wally was insistent that we visit the Future Astronauts’ PR team in London, since she had already met some of them on trips either at the spaceplane’s hangar in Mojave, California, where the spaceplane was built, or at the Spaceport in New Mexico where her spaceflight will begin.
These visits had several purposes. They kept ticket holders updated and informed about progress, and also maintained interest in the project for some extremely patient people. Richard Branson – always ambitious both in outlook and business – had been promising flights for a long time. In 1999, quoted in the Cedar Rapids Gazette from an Internet chat, he said: ‘I hope in five years a reusable rocket will have been developed which can take up to ten people at a time to stay at the Virgin Hotel for two weeks.’
Almost two decades later, the idea of a space hotel remains purely on the drawing board. Virgin Galactic’s commercial spaceflight programme also suffered a serious setback during a fourth powered test flight on 31 October 2014. The mothership WhiteKnightTwo released SpaceShipTwo, as planned, but thirteen seconds later the spaceplane began to disintegrate. The wreckage was scattered across a five-mile (eight-kilometre) area near Mojave Desert’s Koehn Dry Lake, California. The pilot, Peter Siebold, director of Flight Operations for Scaled Composites, which built the spaceplane, survived with extensive injuries because his seat ejected from the vehicle and he could descend using an emergency parachute. When the spaceplane broke up, his co-pilot, Michael Alsbury, was not so fortunate, and the experienced thirty-nine-year-old test pilot died.
‘From my eyes and my ears, I detected nothing that appeared abnormal,’ said the chief executive of the Mojave Air and Space Port, Stuart Witt. This observation turned out to be right. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, Wally’s former employer, found that the crash had resulted from human error. The co-pilot prematurely unlocked the spaceplane’s two tail wings at Mach 0.92 instead of 1.4. This action placed too much strain on the fuselage, and the G forces caused the spaceplane to break up. Since this action had not been predicted, there were no safety procedures in place.
It was a serious setback for commercial spaceflight since, three days beforehand, on 28 October, an Antares rocket belonging to another private company, Orbital Sciences Corporation, had malfunctioned shortly after lift-off. NASA destroyed the rocket with a kill signal. The explosion could be seen for miles along the coast of Virginia. The rocket was flying supplies to the International Space Station as part of a contract with NASA.
The two accidents caused many media pundits to discuss the future of commercial spaceflight, but many concluded that it was here to stay. Earlier that year Orbital Sciences had entered into an agreement with Alliant Techsystems. The result was a new company, Orbital ATK Inc. Today NASA has two partners in its ISS commercial cargo programme: Spac
e X and Orbital ATK.
Virgin Galactic’s programme also got back on track with its second version of SpaceShipTwo. The first six seats for its first official flight, as before, belong to Branson and his family – a public show of his faith in its viability and safety. Over 650 people have bought tickets. Although the press has reported various celebrities as ticket holders – from actor Ashton Kutcher to singers Justin Bieber and Katy Perry – the list is a secret. While Wally bought her ticket early, others are probably ahead of her on the waiting list, and SpaceShipTwo carries just six passengers at a time. This means there could be a long wait if there are monthly flights, though not so long if extra spaceplanes are in service and flights take place every two weeks.
Wally was sure that some people on the waiting list had either dropped out, as a result of the crash, or simply died while waiting to fly. There had been unconfirmed reports in the British press, for instance, that Princess Beatrice had a ticket, but after the accident no longer planned to fly. Why hadn’t Wally’s number gone up? Wally had also heard rumours about some queue-jumping. This was an opportunity for her to address those concerns directly to the team.
Virgin Galactic had recently moved their offices to join others at London’s main HQ, ‘The Battleship’, an appropriately named grey concrete building under an overpass near Paddington station. Wally was both excited and anxious. She was especially disappointed that one of the team she’d met in America – Gemma (which she pronounced with a hard G) – was in New Mexico.
Inside the Battleship we found staff, none of whom looked over thirty, working at computers in an open-plan area surrounding a kitchen-cum-bar area. There were plenty of windows, natural light and glass doors leading to meeting rooms called things like Hub 1. In the communal bar area, topped by a candelabra, were four wooden stools, an impressive coffee machine and snacks of chocolate and protein bars, and packets of quinoa or hummus-flavoured crisps. On a glass shelf above the self-serving area stood bottles of beer and a model of SpaceShipOne.
It was fun and funky, but Wally’s enthusiasm dampened on realising that the Virgin Galactic team was also part of this open-plan office. ‘There are no pictures of space.’
‘That’s because there aren’t many walls.’
There was, however, a standing bookshelf filled with Branson’s various publications, including his autobiography Losing My Virginity, Like A Virgin: Secrets They Won’t Teach You At Business School, and multiple copies of Screw Business As Usual. Wally wrinkled her nose. I suspected the language wasn’t to her taste since, other than bloody and bugger, I’d never heard her swear. ‘Is this what he’s doing? Writing books. Is this why we’re not going up?’
One of the Virgin Galactic team arrived and, surveying her workspace, asked, ‘What do you think? Cool, isn’t it?’
Wally switched immediately into Wally mode. ‘It’s better than cool, it’s fantastic! You guys – are you really stoked about working here? Don’t you want to go there? To space? I would go in a heartbeat.’
Clare seemed very fond of Wally. She apologised that not all the team were present and gave us a quick tour. There was a dodgem car and bowler hats that doubled as light shades, and we posed for photographs beside a cardboard cut-out of Branson in an astronaut suit. The inner walls were covered in Branson’s images, as if it was a family home rather than an office. There were pictures of young Branson, an older, greyer Branson, black-and-white Branson, technicolour Branson. His famous toothy grin and goatee beard were often next to people whose names I probably should have known. I recognised three framed images of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, each one autographed for members of the Branson family: for his son Sam, daughter Holly, and, of course, for Richard himself.
None of this impressed Wally. In fact, she was visibly impatient. She wrinkled her nose at the sign on the wall that said: ‘Screw it, just do it’.
Clare introduced Wally to the other employees. One staff member was clutching a US book on the Mercury 13. Uh oh. It was that one. The book that, according to Wally, had repeated familiar mistakes. The woman pulled me to one side and asked quietly if I thought Wally would sign it. ‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘but be prepared for a negative comment, because Wally doesn’t like that particular version of events.’
Clare sat us down and explained the situation so far, reminding Wally gently, ‘It’s all in the emails, too.’ At that stage, they had just done a 50,000-foot glide with a ‘feather flight’ – where the tail fins unlocked and moved ninety degrees – planned for the following month. Powered test flights, we were informed, would take place towards the back end of the following year. ‘Richard isn’t going up until the end of 2018 at the earliest.’
Wally was almost speechless. Almost. ‘I thought he was going up in 2017!’
‘We never had plans to fly this year,’ Clare said gently.
The problem in managing Wally’s expectations partly arose because newspapers had been reporting the company’s readiness to take space tourists for almost a decade by now. In 2012, for example, several newspapers quoted Branson stating he intended to fly into space by the end of the following year.
I brought up Wally’s fear about queue-jumping and mentioned the auctions. In 2014, for instance, someone had bought a Virgin Galactic ticket at an auction for close to $1 million to be on the same flight as the actor Leonardo DiCaprio. Would this put the successful bidder on an earlier flight than Wally?
Clare reassured Wally that any new tickets took people to the bottom of the list and that, although places might free themselves up, they remained empty on their list so Wally might well have fewer people ahead of her. But as the list was kept secret, we didn’t know for sure, and Wally was none the wiser.
‘Stephen Hawking is our only free ticket,’ said Clare.
Once flights were underway, they would be every couple of weeks. This was an astonishing thought. Several spacecraft were currently being built, and there would be three in total. Clare related that Branson liked to say, ‘We’re not building a spaceship; we’re building a space line.’
The Mercury 13 book was produced by a staff member for Wally to sign. As expected, she was not impressed. ‘I don’t like this one.’ She signed it in red pen anyway, with the usual smiley face, and did the same with the black-and-white photos inside. On seeing Jackie Cochran’s image, Wally grumbled loudly: ‘It was all her fault we didn’t go up. Her and Johnson. Jackie Cochran was a son of a gun.’
When he was vice president of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson sent a typed letter to NASA administrator James Webb, dated 15 March 1962. It had been drafted by Johnson’s assistant Liz Carpenter. In it, he referred to having talked to Mercury 13 members Jerrie Cobb and Janey Hart, and asked for advice about restrictions for women astronauts and ‘whether NASA has disqualified anyone because of being a woman’. It ended: ‘I know we both are grateful for the desire to serve on the part of these women, and look forward to the time when they can.’ When this letter was unearthed almost forty years later, it revealed Johnson’s true feelings. Instead of his signature, there was a handwritten, ‘Let’s stop this now!’, and then the instruction: ‘File’.
‘When she said 2018 I was shocked,’ said Wally in a taxi to St Pancras station for our train to Cologne. ‘I thought it was going to be this year.’
She was understandably dejected. If you were thirty, forty, even a fifty- or sixty-something, the delays were a setback, but no more than that. Wally was close to eighty. She had a more pressing deadline. Although her mother had lived into her nineties, there was no guarantee for anyone in life and Wally, despite her physical and mental fitness, had less time left than most. After all the years of hype, sub-orbital space tourism is now a genuine possibility, but if the delays go on for another five or ten years, Wally might not live to see it happen. I felt both sympathy and empathy for her situation. She could be exasperating company at times, but I liked Wally. The longer we spent together, the more I understood her lust for life and impatience to get i
nto space. In her position, I’d be equally driven and no doubt as difficult, demanding answers and continually putting on the pressure to ensure that the momentum of her race to space continued.
These warm, fuzzy feelings hardened slightly when she continued her usual part-monologue, part-commentary, part-interrogation on the Eurostar – especially when we changed trains in Belgium and had to find a restroom.
‘I thought we were going straight to Cologne.’
‘I did say we were changing at Brussels.’
‘Well … we’re here now. I can’t believe you had to pay sixty cents for the john.’
On the next part of the journey to Cologne, I ordered wine from the drinks trolley. Wally chatted and mostly I just listened. I wondered sometimes if she needed an answer, because as soon as I responded there was always another question.
After a while, the constant verbosity subsided into background noise and, to maintain my sanity, I started the stopwatch on my iPhone whenever she stopped talking. The longest period of silence recorded throughout the five-hour journey was two minutes and fifteen seconds. The drinks trolley trundled along the aisle.
‘Wow,’ noticed Wally. ‘You sure like your wine.’
That night I switched from wine to beer in Gaffel am Dom, a brewery and pub in the shadow of the cathedral and across the street from our hotel, which itself was next to the train station. Wally, who had visited Cologne in the 1960s, was thrilled by the pub’s hubbub, the decor, the coloured glass on the ceiling, and how the waiters carried miniature glasses of beer on handheld drink carousels.
‘I’ve never been in a place like this before.’
‘Not in a bier keller?’
‘No. Never. I don’t drink.’
And I realised that, despite her extensive travels, she was also – in many ways – an innocent abroad.
The next morning we popped inside the station so that I could record Wally walking out into the square, describing the cathedral in front of us. After our first radio programme together, I realised that this was one of her broadcasting strengths. She might not be able to read a script with ease, but her commentaries were natural and spontaneous. ‘This is incredible. We’re at the Cologne train station and we’re gonna walk outside and then right to my left is the cathedral, which is fantastic. I saw that, oh, forty years ago, and it’s so outstandingly beautiful. All the spires reaching to the sky,’ she enthused, ‘is absolutely fantastic. And we’re here to interview the European Space Agency folks. I just love it here in this town square.’