Virgin Galactic
I attended my only Edinburgh Science Festival event today with Michael Davidson - a talk by Will Whitehorn - Richard Branson's right-hand man and now president of Virgin Galactic. It was a truly inspiring talk - up there with Ken Wallis's autobiographical epic that should have lasted just an hour but took three! This talk was unfortunately only half-an-hour long but launched enough questions to fill the hour.
Will's your typical charismatic, high-flyer businessman, and every aspect of the talk was fascinating starting with Will's expose of the inner workings of the Virgin empire. Previously he was in charge of Virgin Trains and had once attempted to secure contracts to develop a passenger railway in Florida centred on Orlando, but was thwarted by an unhelpful Jeb Bush. He seemed keen to highlight Virgin's commitment to an ethical business practice - pushing forward high technology, to design lighter passenger planes made of composite materials, as well as learning how to recycle composites. They also baffled their competitors when they chose to buy the most expensive trains for their new fleet with regenerative breaking capabilities. This way whenever their train puts on the brakes it adds power to the railway's electrical grid, and for this their electricity costs are reduced to compared to conventional trains - their competitors say "but electricity is cheap", whereas Virgin's looking into the future - expecting the cost of electricity to rise. Virgin likes to think of itself as investing in the future and Will was a great believer of what he called joined-up thinking - where businesses and government work together to fulfill their common interests which should also be in the best interests of the public.
The highlight of the talk though was the SpaceShipOne story. Will discussed how prior to WW2, innovation was mostly driven through philanthropy, and since then there's been a lack of support for the kind risky projects that are come from individual ingenuity and passion. Following the Ansari X-Prize, a privately raised fund to encourage privateers to build a craft capable of taking people into space and back, this is beginning to change, and subsequently several other prizes have been created to encourage innovative thinking in a wide range of technologies. Paul Allen, second only to Bill Gates at Microsoft and a keen philanthropist, provided the venture capital that allowed the talented engineer Burt Rutan to design SpaceShipOne. At a total cost of $26 million the project was cheaper to develop than NASA's space pen, if were are to believe urban myth, that was famously derided by the pencil carrying Russian cosmonauts! With a total of just 36 moving parts, and Microsoft Flight Simulator controlling the aircraft systems, it was an amazingly cheap and simple design.
I remember in 2004, when SpaceShipOne performed two successful sub-orbital launches into space within a week to claim the X-Prize. To my generation, watching live the first privately funded space mission, it felt almost as important as the moon-landings. Since then Virgin has offered to fund the project further and turn it into a real business by developing SpaceShipTwo that will be capable of carrying 5 passengers for just £100,000 each. Much more economical than the X-Prize qualifying two-passenger SpaceShipOne, it compares well, if you consider inflation, to the cost of a trans-atlantic trip by Flying Boat back in the 1920s. Just as there were then there are enough people capable of affording such extravagant trips. The first passengers will be Richard Branson & family, with Will Whitehorn being on the second launch and arguably becoming the first Scot in space. Talking of which, Scotland is considered to be an ideal location for a future spaceport, with lots of uninhabited land and most importantly a quiet air space! There was even talk of sponsoring a reality TV show where the winners get a trip into space - must be good publicity for them.
Eventually, by reducing the turn-around time between launches, by having more confidence in the craft as well as more craft, they'll be able to get higher rate of passengers into space, so economy of scale will reduce the costs down so that in nine years time a trip on SpaceShipTwo will cost just £25,000. Only 500 people have been lucky enough to go into space to date, and Virgin Galactic expects to send that many people into space in just the first year, with a total of 50,000 throughout the entire entire SpaceShipTwo programme. Virgin are keen to highlight how tiny the environmental impact of the project will be: the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to get those 50,000 people into space will be less than that from a single space shuttle launch! If SpaceShipTwo proves to be commercially viable then work on SpaceShipThree, a true orbiter, will begin. Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have already been caught working out on the back of an envelope how to get to Mars, by viable business strategy rather than any technical details.
Will's your typical charismatic, high-flyer businessman, and every aspect of the talk was fascinating starting with Will's expose of the inner workings of the Virgin empire. Previously he was in charge of Virgin Trains and had once attempted to secure contracts to develop a passenger railway in Florida centred on Orlando, but was thwarted by an unhelpful Jeb Bush. He seemed keen to highlight Virgin's commitment to an ethical business practice - pushing forward high technology, to design lighter passenger planes made of composite materials, as well as learning how to recycle composites. They also baffled their competitors when they chose to buy the most expensive trains for their new fleet with regenerative breaking capabilities. This way whenever their train puts on the brakes it adds power to the railway's electrical grid, and for this their electricity costs are reduced to compared to conventional trains - their competitors say "but electricity is cheap", whereas Virgin's looking into the future - expecting the cost of electricity to rise. Virgin likes to think of itself as investing in the future and Will was a great believer of what he called joined-up thinking - where businesses and government work together to fulfill their common interests which should also be in the best interests of the public.
The highlight of the talk though was the SpaceShipOne story. Will discussed how prior to WW2, innovation was mostly driven through philanthropy, and since then there's been a lack of support for the kind risky projects that are come from individual ingenuity and passion. Following the Ansari X-Prize, a privately raised fund to encourage privateers to build a craft capable of taking people into space and back, this is beginning to change, and subsequently several other prizes have been created to encourage innovative thinking in a wide range of technologies. Paul Allen, second only to Bill Gates at Microsoft and a keen philanthropist, provided the venture capital that allowed the talented engineer Burt Rutan to design SpaceShipOne. At a total cost of $26 million the project was cheaper to develop than NASA's space pen, if were are to believe urban myth, that was famously derided by the pencil carrying Russian cosmonauts! With a total of just 36 moving parts, and Microsoft Flight Simulator controlling the aircraft systems, it was an amazingly cheap and simple design.
I remember in 2004, when SpaceShipOne performed two successful sub-orbital launches into space within a week to claim the X-Prize. To my generation, watching live the first privately funded space mission, it felt almost as important as the moon-landings. Since then Virgin has offered to fund the project further and turn it into a real business by developing SpaceShipTwo that will be capable of carrying 5 passengers for just £100,000 each. Much more economical than the X-Prize qualifying two-passenger SpaceShipOne, it compares well, if you consider inflation, to the cost of a trans-atlantic trip by Flying Boat back in the 1920s. Just as there were then there are enough people capable of affording such extravagant trips. The first passengers will be Richard Branson & family, with Will Whitehorn being on the second launch and arguably becoming the first Scot in space. Talking of which, Scotland is considered to be an ideal location for a future spaceport, with lots of uninhabited land and most importantly a quiet air space! There was even talk of sponsoring a reality TV show where the winners get a trip into space - must be good publicity for them.
Eventually, by reducing the turn-around time between launches, by having more confidence in the craft as well as more craft, they'll be able to get higher rate of passengers into space, so economy of scale will reduce the costs down so that in nine years time a trip on SpaceShipTwo will cost just £25,000. Only 500 people have been lucky enough to go into space to date, and Virgin Galactic expects to send that many people into space in just the first year, with a total of 50,000 throughout the entire entire SpaceShipTwo programme. Virgin are keen to highlight how tiny the environmental impact of the project will be: the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to get those 50,000 people into space will be less than that from a single space shuttle launch! If SpaceShipTwo proves to be commercially viable then work on SpaceShipThree, a true orbiter, will begin. Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have already been caught working out on the back of an envelope how to get to Mars, by viable business strategy rather than any technical details.