If they could power rockets on enthusiasm alone, then David Shilling would already be orbiting Earth. The millionaire milliner, who earned the sobriquet Mad Hatter for his extravagant Ascot creations in the more ostentatious years of the last century, has been obsessed by space since he was a boy. Memorabilia, astronauts, space-inspired hats. Now, at the ripe old age of 70, he finds a visit within tantalising reach — and he’s struggling to contain himself.
“I’ve always, always been fascinated by the idea of space travel, right from when I was a little boy — I’m that sort of generation, I suppose,” he says. “Doing what I do, I’m into visual images, and when I saw those first pictures of Earth from space... I mean, that’s an image I can never forget. It’s mind-blowing.”
Shilling has applied to join a mission to the International Space Station as one of a mixed crew of professional and privately funded astronauts. Operated by the Houston-based Axiom Space, it’s the package holiday to end all others: 10 days in total, all-inclusive, right down to the customised craft and spacesuits, and the bottomless prosecco (not really).
Blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center, he and a group of three or four other private clients — along with a duo of professional astronauts — will spend up to two days en route to the space station. They will dock for eight days, soak up the views of the curvature of the Earth, hang around, literally, then head back down to Earth with a splash (somewhere in the Atlantic).
“As far as I’m concerned, the journey has already begun,” he says. “It’s like anyone going on holiday — the minute you book the flight, you start thinking about the journey. In a tiny way, you’re sort of on your journey already.”
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Axiom, whose motto is “Fostering humanity’s expansion to space”, is no cowboy operator. At its helm are two Michaels: Suffredini, Nasa’s ISS program manager for a decade until he retired in 2015; and the Spanish-born Lopez-Alegria, a former commander of the ISS who holds two current Nasa records: the highest number of EVAs, or spacewalks (10), and the highest cumulative EVA time (nearly 68 hours).
Shilling met Lopez-Alegria last November at a space conference organised by Prince Albert of Monaco, where the designer lives for part of the year. There was a panel of seven astronauts, and Buzz Aldrin, whom a starstruck Shilling met on the night, was in the audience. The project was discussed and Shilling was hooked.
“There aren’t many living astronauts, so there is this incredible family spirit,” he says. “It’s like an extended family, and it’s growing. I’m just honoured that they’re so accepting and that they’re taking me seriously.”
It’s not a done deal yet. There are 15 gruelling weeks of training to get through — his age is a worry, although, as he points out, John Glenn was seven years older on his last mission. Then there are the medicals, psychological testing and that no small matter of paying the bill: $55m, reduced to $50m in true “grab it before it’s gone” fashion.
One of the four private astronauts has already paid up. (Axiom is keeping shtum about their identity.) David is part-way there, working with a number of partners and going all out. In for a Shilling...
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Two other, presumably astronomically rich people must still come forward for the seats to be filled (and custom-built) for the early 2021 departure — aboard a craft procured from either Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Boeing, the two private companies that provide this service to Nasa.
Axiom’s plan is to replace the ISS with a commercial version when it is retired within the next decade. It will take the modules for its own station up to space in instalments, piece them together while attached to the ISS, then head off into orbit as a private entity. The galaxy’s first space hotel? You can check out, but only occasionally leave? It’s a hell of a thought.
Having once spent 215 days in space on a single mission, Lopez-Alegria knows exactly what awaits Shilling. He’s been bowled over by the hat-maker’s enthusiasm. “That’s what he brings,” he says. “We met at an event and he sought me out afterwards. He’s very excited about it. He’s trying to come up with clever ways to fund his trip. It’s difficult to put a price tag on something like this. Unlike buying a yacht or a mansion, you don’t have a tangible asset when it’s over, but it’s an experience that will give you a different perspective, literally and figuratively. It’s priceless.”
For Shilling, it is the latest chapter in a career characterised by outlandish innovation. As well as creating some of the most neck-strainingly vast hats in the history of fashion (one, fashioned into a rocket, was about 8ft high), he has worked for the United Nations, promoting art and design in developing countries, and as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art.
One of his tasks for the latter is preparing students for disappointment. Is he himself prepared? “Space might be a terrible disappointment. You don’t know. As with anyone going on any trip, you have to face the fact that it might not live up to your expectations.”
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He will have to endure plenty of deprivation. The tight confines, particularly on the two-day transfer, make easyJet look like business class. And the ISS “isn’t exactly the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco, you know?”. But he’s ready, he claims, and in true creative fashion is already sweating the small stuff.
“I haven’t got a thing to wear! I mean, I’m obviously going to plan my little wardrobe. When you think about someone going to space, you think spacesuit, but in fact, up to now, all the professionals, once they’re on the ISS, just wear what they’d wear at home — though what I wear at home is maybe a bit different to what they do. If I’m going to be seen by a Martian, I wanna meet that Martian looking really good.”
And he fully intends to use the experience to inspire his work. “There won’t be much room, but I’ve been told we can take a few little things with us, so I’ll be taking a pencil and paper, and coming up with a few ideas and designs while I’m up there.”
Shilling is proud that he may get to play a small part in the opening up of space to the masses, and thinks it won’t take long for prices to fall to more manageable levels. “I remember the first time I worked on a computer. It was when I was designing china for Wedgwood, and they bought this thing for a quarter of a million pounds. It was the size of a bed. Now look at what we have.”
He adds: “Thirty years ago, it was inconceivable to pop over to New York for a weekend. That was practically like going to the moon. Another 30 years and that’s how space tourism will have changed. This is just the beginning.”
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But first there are those obstacles to overcome: physical, physiological, logistical — and financial. He’s undaunted.
“If I wanted an easy life, I would have picked a luxury cruise.”
Axiom Space is offering a 10-day mission to the International Space Station from $50m ($5m discount), with an anticipated departure date in the first quarter of 2021. For details, visit axiomspace.com.
Additional reporting by Harriet Marsden
ROCKET MEN: THE RACE TO DOMINATE THE SUBORBITAL FLIGHT MARKET
Leading the space race are three key players: Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon; Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO; and Sir Richard Branson.
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Bezos’s Blue Origin, founded in 2000, has flown payloads into space several times on its reusable rocket, New Shepard. Its aim was to take people to the edge of space to achieve weightlessness before 2020. This is suborbital flight. (New Glenn, another ship in production, will go into Earth orbit and beyond.) Tickets, rumoured to be $200,000-$300,000, are not yet on sale, so watch this space.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. It sent the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket, Falcon 1, into orbit six years later. This won the company a commercial resupply contract with Nasa for the ISS. Musk has his eye on Mars: last week he announced his aim to test the Starship, SpaceX’s orbital prototype, next month. He hopes it will be taking passengers to the Red Planet by 2024.
Last to join the race, in 2004, was Virgin Galactic, the space-flight arm of Branson’s Virgin Group. Its SpaceShipTwo (SS2), VSS Enterprise, made its first powered test flight in 2013, but was destroyed during another flight in 2014, crashing into the Mojave Desert, killing a pilot.
This set the project back, but the second SS2 craft, VSS Unity, had its maiden space flight in December and its first test passenger in February. About 700 people have bought a $250,000 ticket, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber. Branson, ever the optimist, predicts that he will be on board his first Virgin Galactic flight “in months”.
