by Sue Nelson
Fortunately there was a spacecraft on view, just not the one we’d expected. In Legacy Park, a small grassy area in front of the Mojave Spaceport, stood an unusual traffic cone-shaped vehicle. It was a Roton rocket ATV (atmospheric test vehicle). Entrepreneur, engineer and former NASA consultant Gary Hudson set up the Rotary Rocket Company in 1996, in Mojave, to produce this commercial spaceflight vehicle. The Roton rocket would be a piloted vertical take-off and landing vehicle. Post-orbit, it would use a motor mounted on its nose with three rotary blades – rather like a helicopter – to land upright back on Earth. Hudson’s idea, which was considered fanciful by many, was to sell launch slots for satellites wanting to get into Low Earth Orbit.
Hudson was decades ahead of his time. Unfortunately, the company closed its doors in 2000, when the finances ran out, and the Roton rocket never went into space. Four of the company’s staff, however, went on to found XCOR.
However, according to reports, XCOR’s doors were not yet closed. At the time of the lay-off, industry analyst Bill Ostrove told Forbes magazine that the slow growth of demand for space tourism was partly to blame, and also that ‘their primary competitor, Virgin Galactic, pivoted to focus on launching satellites rather than human tourists into space.’
This referred to Virgin Orbit, which was set up in March 2017. Two years earlier, Virgin Galactic announced that it would launch small satellites into space from a rocket called LauncherOne, which would be launched from beneath a Boeing 747 Branson had nicknamed ‘Cosmic Girl’. Virgin Orbit was a spin-off of the LauncherOne programme, and would run in parallel to Virgin Galactic.
This was a good tactical decision, but what happened to XCOR was a reminder of how good ideas can falter. Even with the right technology, backing and almost twenty years of expertise, the company still couldn’t make it work commercially. No wonder Wally was anxious.
The Spanish colonial-style Hotel Encanto de las Cruces welcomed the three of us with refreshing drinks and the tinkling of fountains. Up in our room, Loretta and I giggled at the pairs of white towelling slippers on the carpet in between our beds. There were also two matching bath robes and two totally unexpected goodie baskets containing fruit, snacks, soft drinks and – best of all – a silver Virgin Galactic spaceplane-branded water bottle. Being easily pleased by space tat is the secret to a happy life.
Wally’s room was in an adjacent corridor. She came to visit when Loretta and I were both post-shower, wearing the fluffy robes and matching towel turbans on our wet hair.
‘Look at you two,’ she exclaimed, and then, with a touch of sadness, added: ‘I’m all on my own.’
Our decision to share a room would have been, I realised, Wally’s preferred choice. Wally was totally independent, but she loved company. I made a mental note to pop in and see her whenever I could.
Freshened up an hour later, we headed to an area by the outdoor pool to meet our Virgin Galactic hosts and some of the other Future Astronauts for welcome drinks. Wally had met Richard Branson and his mother on a prior trip and, while his presence was never guaranteed, we knew in advance that he would not be attending this one. A few days earlier, Hurricane Irma had wrecked his home on Necker Island, alongside thousands of others, on its path through the Caribbean.
A small bar was set up near a low table and chairs, as waiters hovered with canapés nearby beneath the palm trees. Wally, as usual, chose a non-alcoholic drink. Loretta and I dived into the margaritas. As this was a private trip, I’m not releasing the identities of other Future Astronauts, but the first person I spotted caused some personal excitement. For a brief moment, I thought one of the ticket holders was Stan Lee. This was the man who, along with artist Jack Kirby, created Spider-Man, Ant Man, Black Widow, the Hulk, Black Panther, Iron Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. As a child, I had pretended to be ‘Invisible Sue’ from the Fantastic Four in the school playground. Apart from the remarkable physical resemblance to Lee, the elderly man sat on the chair in front of me sported the Marvel comic icon’s familiar tinted glasses. Most surprising of all was that he looked much older than Wally.
My mistaken assumption had been that Wally was the oldest Future Astronaut on the waiting list. But ‘R’ – who incidentally was not Stan Lee – appeared to be in his nineties. I discovered later that R was in fact a youthful eighty-nine. His elegant and glamorous plus-one partner was in her nineties. Initially I was surprised to see so many other older ticket holders but, after talking to one Swiss father and son, learned that it was the thirty-something son who had bought the golden ticket.
The Virgin Galactic personnel included a Dutchman, Martijn, and two British women, Tiff and Clare, who I recognised from the London HQ. Everyone present gave a brief introduction. This included a Japanese guy who had hedged his bets by buying tickets into space from several companies. His female plus-one was involved in a space venture in Japan that took people’s ashes into space. The Virgin Galactic reps sat up and took notice. Another ticket holder, a friendly retired American man in his early sixties at a guess, had once sold Virgin Galactic tickets to others. He was with his male partner, a bearded blonde. We were also joined by a former NASA employee. She was a woman of an uncertain age, feisty, and wore a designer shirt. She reminded me of Mercury 13 member Jerri Truhill with her deep voice, constantly wisecracking. Afterwards, at a communal table in the hotel’s restaurant, one of the ticket holders lowered himself into the seat next to me. ‘I’m not sure I’ve got the energy to sit next to Wally,’ he joked under his breath. ‘She’s a pistol, a fireball, a force of nature.’
It was true. Her energy levels were off the scale – not just for a seventy-eight-year-old, but for a thirty-eight-year-old.
After our starters there was a late arrival: a young British woman, ‘B’, who had gained a Masters at seventeen and made her money in property development abroad. She was successful, vivacious and extremely likeable, and wore an eye-catching black-and-white scarf covered in astronauts. It was like nothing I’d ever seen – and I knew my space merchandise. Both Wally and I coveted it, so I asked the woman if she didn’t mind telling me where it was from.
‘Chanel,’ she replied, and all my hopes of owning a similar scarf disappeared. B’s young daughter had also saved up and bought her a matching Chanel space pin, which was a reminder that wealthy people inhabit a different world. The scarf designer was Karl Lagerfield, whom she knew and frequented for his clothes. The space theme was going to be big, apparently. That night I did an internet search and noted that Lagerfeld’s space collection had hit the catwalk six months earlier in March, and that space will indeed be this season’s look. I checked the cost of the scarf. It was over $800. Thankfully, I own a few NASA T-shirts so, despite being unable to afford the scarf, I will still be en vogue.
The next morning, Wally admired my shift dress. ‘You dress like me. Simple. My mother was all about town, elegantly dressed, immaculate and on committees. I was the complete opposite. She wanted me to come out in New York. Well … I wasn’t having any of that.’
I’d never seen Wally in a dress. She wore her usual uniform of cargo pants and a crisp, freshly pressed shirt. This time the shirt was blue denim, and ‘WALLY’ was monogrammed in red capitals on the right breast pocket, just above the words ‘safety judge’. On her left pocket was embroidered SpaceShip2 and Virgin Galactic.
People divided into groups for either a hike to Dipping Springs or a local outreach event. Naturally, Wally chose the latter. It was a trip to the Las Cruces Challenger Center. Challenger Centers were set up after the Space Shuttle accident, on a cold morning on 28 January 1986. It should have been a routine tenth launch for the Challenger shuttle. This was the shuttle that had taken Sally Ride, America’s first female astronaut, into space three years earlier. But seventy-three seconds after lift-off, a booster engine failed. To everyone’s disbelief, the shuttle exploded in a huge ball of white smoke and produced two further plumes that splintered off in opposite directions. The NASA launch commentator understated the
issue when he said it was ‘obviously a major malfunction.’
All seven crew members on-board perished. Their collective deaths were witnessed by the astronauts’ friends and family on the ground at Cape Canaveral and by millions of others live on CNN, including school children. It was a shocking moment in US space history. The dead included Judy Resnik, a seasoned astronaut and America’s second woman in space, plus a woman who would have become the first teacher in space, Sharon ‘Christa’ McAuliffe.
Much of the pre-publicity in the media had focused on McAuliffe, the school teacher from New Hampshire who had been selected from a pool of 10,000 applicants to be the first US civilian in space. She had planned to give school lessons while in orbit and, partly as a result of the educational aims of this mission, in the aftermath of the fatal accident the crew’s families helped create the Challenger Center for Space Science Education a few months later. The first Challenger Learning Center opened in Texas in 1988, and now there were over forty across three continents. I reported for the BBC on the first Challenger Learning Centre to be opened outside America in October 1999. It was at Leicester, in the UK. As a result of making that television report, I was familiar with the format: students undertook a variety of mission scenarios in a realistic setting of control rooms, off-world bases or space station laboratories, completing tasks that promoted science and engineering. Wally had no idea what was coming, but when she saw the room full of school kids and our mission leader dressed in a blue astronaut flight suit, she was hooked – especially as our three-hour mission was to go to the Moon.
For the first half of the session, while Wally was in mission control, I was in a space lab paired with a ten-year-old girl performing science experiments to test water system samples for contamination. Every so often, an emergency interrupted the routine and we responded accordingly. It was great fun.
‘I could see you!’ Wally said excitedly, when we performed the switch-over and I entered mission control. There, I spied on Wally through the monitors as she enjoyed the social side of simulated space travel and chatted to everyone, no doubt asking plenty of questions.
Later, over lunch, we discussed our mission with those who had been on the hike and who hadn’t realised that the ‘outreach’ trip would be so good. It inspired one of the Future Astronauts to decide to help fund and set up a Center in his hometown.
After lunch, four white Land Rovers – one of Virgin Galactic’s sponsors – waited to drive us to the Spaceport. Wally immediately went on her phone to leave a message for a friend. ‘It’s 3.40 pm New Mexico time and I’m on the way to the Richard Branson Spaceport …’
Technically it was the state of New Mexico’s Spaceport, of course, but we were waived through a border stop and turned off at a sign for Uphorn. The smooth road soon deteriorated into a dirt track, and the four identical cars, one after the other, kicked up clouds of dust. It resembled a scene from a thriller where a covert mission was about to happen. The whole road will eventually be smoothed over, but in the meantime, during twenty-four miles of bumps and sand, with a landscape of desert scrub and mountains in the distance, Wally kept up a stream of questions to John, the driver: ‘What do these lines do on the rear window? How do I see a film back here? How do we open this cold box?’
Like many of her questions, most of them were asked without pausing to see if she could answer them herself and, before John had finished explaining, she had started the next question. Finally, we could see the Spaceport in the distance. But only just. It blended in with the landscape, low and brown. It was an unusual shape, too, and reminded me of a pair of old-fashioned sunglasses or a butterfly, with two wings and two large, circular eyes.
‘I’ve heard butterfly before,’ said John. ‘I’ve also heard female lady parts and a lady bug.’ He laughed. ‘It’s whatever you want it to be.’
I took a long, hard look at the Spaceport. Despite owning lady parts myself, I couldn’t see the resemblance.
The location of the first private Spaceport in the world is in the Jornada del Muerto Desert, near the White Sands Missile Range. This is advantageous for future spaceflights, as there will be no commercial planes overhead due to the Range’s restricted airspace. Even though the Spaceport is currently empty, there was a security gate, and we handed in passports or driving licences. For some reason, this made Wally unhappy and, uncharacteristically, she snapped at the guard. ‘Don’t damage my licence.’
It was held together by tape and already falling apart. I’m not sure she noticed that he looked more than a little upset. Closer to the building, before reaching a giant, adobe, brick-red, steel and cast-glass sculpture in the shape of a half-crescent Moon, we stopped to take photographs.
A few of us walked the remaining few hundred metres to the entrance, alongside road signs saying Asteroid Beltway and Half Moon Street. From the ground, the Spaceport wasn’t particularly impressive. It was plain, brown and understated, with curved walls leading towards a locked door between the two ‘butterfly wings’ or ‘bug eyes’. Our Virgin Galactic guide provided a few facts and figures – it was on 18,000 acres of land and the runway was 12,000 feet long. That converted to 3,658 metres – over two miles, or 3.6 kilometres. Wally was astonished. ‘I can take off and land six times!’
She had already flown over the Spaceport, and had landed and taken off again from the runway twice before it had officially opened in 2012, but couldn’t recall when.
When the doors opened, it was a theatrical moment, but there was nothing to see. An empty, rippling, curved corridor tempted us forward. It didn’t take long before the walls changed into windows. There on our right, looking down below, was SpaceShipTwo. It was a thrilling sight. The entrance at ground level was an illusion. Our corridor was actually a bridged walkway several storeys above the hangar.
The spaceplane was the only vehicle in the hangar, and smaller than I expected. It was white with a black underbelly, and resembled a private jet. There were four rows of three round porthole-style windows along the fuselage for the passengers and five windows for the cockpit. Pin-up art of a female astronaut, similar in style to that seen on conventional Virgin aircraft, decorated the curved nose beneath the cockpit. She appeared to be doing a Fosbury Flop over an invisible high jump. There were no wings in the middle section of the plane. Instead, at the back were large, upturned tail fins resembling those from 1960s Cadillacs. Cameras flashed, but it was the light at the end of the corridor that drew me. It was an unbelievable sight. We were now at the front of the hangar behind an enormous three-storey window overlooking the runway, with distant mountains as a backdrop. Stunning doesn’t begin to describe it. We had effectively entered Spaceport America through the equivalent of an unmarked back door. The spaceplane was cool, but this view of blue sky, sandy scrub and distant mountains was a showstopper. The Foster and Partners-designed building was also an amazing location on Earth to begin a journey into space. It was other-worldly.
There was an overwhelming amount of natural light and, since the building was in a desert, there were eleven boreholes for water – of which four were active. As the guide Martijn provided some facts and figures, his voice echoed around the building, making it difficult to hear. Wally struggled while I gazed out of the enormous windows. The Land Rovers were now parked on the runway apron.
We got inside the cars again and were driven along the vast empty expanse of the Spaceport’s runway. It was over two miles (3.6 kilometres or 12,000 feet long) and forty-two inches (107 centimetres) thick, including a fourteen-inch (35.5 centimetre) layer of concrete. I stuck my head out of the roof window and the skin on my face rippled backwards with the buffeting wind. I had simulated my own launch into space. Wally was busy examining the windsock.
‘See the wind going into the windsock? That’s coming from the west. So if we were taking off north we’d have a left crosswind. If we were taking off south we’d have a right crosswind. Always wing into the wind.’
When the four vehicles reached the end o
f the runway, they lined themselves up and started revving their engines. Side by side, it felt like we were either going to be part of a race or a car commercial. Wally was told to put on her seat belt. It was going to be a race.
The acceleration took us all by surprise. After the initial shock, Wally, Loretta and I whooped with delight as the car reached 130 miles per hour. It was the fastest any of us had ever been in a car. We had not won the race, but it was another first for three young-at-heart women with a combined age of over 200 years.
Back at the Spaceport building, a lift took us to an area on the third floor that will become the Future Astronauts Lounge, which will also be open to friends and family for the flight. The huge, cavernous space, with a massive curved section, consisted of multiple vertical windows extending from the floors below, and overlooked the runway. We were witnessing the baby steps of commercial space tourism, and I was full of admiration for those who had bought tickets as they, along with the entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers, were an integral part of this future. Without these ticket holders and the promise of their business, none of this would be happening.
I asked if the SpaceShipTwo we had seen from the overhead bridge was flight-ready and, to my surprise, discovered it was not the real thing. It was a full-scale model from the UK’s 2012 Farnborough Airshow. Most of the ticket holders had seen the real thing in Mojave, but it still felt a bit of a cheat. Martijn informed everyone that a replica of the front part of the spaceship would eventually be displayed in the lounge so that people could sit inside and get an idea of what the real spaceship was like. Wally grumbled below her breath. ‘They said that last time.’