Virgin Galactic ticket-holders converged on the 111-year-old Explorers Club in New York this past week for an update on progress since the test crash of SpaceShipTwo last fall.
VG customer relations president Stephen Attenborough assured the audience, which included future astronauts from Canada, Great Britain, Switzerland and the U.S., that a replacement version of SS2 is nearly complete, with rigorous test flights scheduled to commence in 2016. Attenborough also confirmed that VG founder Sir Richard Branson still plans to be aboard the first commercial SS2 spaceflight. Speculation is that probably won’t occur until 2017.
Virgin Galactic's original SpaceShipTwo firing its rocket motor. A new SS2 is almost complete and... [+]
VG’s new senior test pilot, Mark “Forger” Stucky, then discussed his supersonic flights in the original version of SS2 and his extensive career as a military pilot, including Mach 3 flights in the SR-71 Blackbird. Stucky will be taking many of VG's 700-plus ticket-holders to space, considered 100 kilometers above sea level, and told those present in the audience that he is “incredibly excited” for the opportunity.
At the end of the evening, a lively Q&A featuring astronaut Greg Olsen was conducted. Olsen was the third paying passenger to fly aboard a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, shelling out $20 million in 2005 – or nearly 90 times what VG ticketholders are paying (the going price for a VG ticket is $250,000). For the event, Olsen donned a blue flight-suit he had worn on his 10-day orbital excursion.
Questions focused on what VG suborbital ticket-holders should especially be aware of during their relatively short time (approximately five minutes) in space. Olsen marveled about the life-changing view, but said weightlessness was what really did it for him. He said that simulations he had done on zero G parabolic flights were interesting, but “there is no substitute for the real thing.”
In September, Virgin Galactic staff and ticket-holders gathered with astronaut Greg Olsen (center)... [+]
Olsen also asserted that his centrifuge training at the NASTAR Center in Pennsylvania really helped him cope with the intense G forces experienced on a space flight. A VG group, who had just completed its own centrifuge experience that afternoon, didn't disagree.
On a broader front, Olsen remarked that America is becoming more risk-averse, and that accidents during testing, such as SS2’s last year, while regrettable are part of pushing new boundaries. On the lighter side, Olsen joked that, as an astronaut, his most-oft-asked question by children is, “How do you go to the bathroom in space?” He noted when he had met the Dalai Lama, that question was His Holiness’s first, too.
Mark "Forger" Stucky, Virgin Galactic's senior test pilot, discussed taking the SR-71 Blackbird... [+]
The Explorers Club event was the 14th international gathering of ticket-holders since last fall's crash. VG media relations director Clare Pelly says the events have had large turnouts and that ticket-holders seem confident they will soon fly to space.
A recently completed NTSB investigation found that VG’s Oct. 31, 2014, crash was due to an error by SS2 co-pilot Michael Alsbury, who was killed, not to anything structurally wrong with the spacecraft. Alsbury had deployed the re-entry “feathering” device too early, causing the craft to break apart during ascent. Pilot Peter Siebold survived the crash, but was injured.
(Editor's Note: Jim Clash, who wrote this piece and conducted the live interview with Greg Olsen at The Explorers Club, has been a Virgin Galactic ticket-holder since 2010.)
