Perth rocket scientist Enrico Palermo’s space mission with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic

ENRICO Palermo, the Perth rocket man hand-picked to head Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space fleet, is obsessed with 18 seconds.

Specifically, increasing the burn duration of the rocket powering Virgin Galactic’s custom-built tourist spacecraft by slightly less time than it takes an Olympic runner to cover 200m.

Getting there would be enough to propel VSS Unity more than 80km off the Earth’s surface and into the fringes of space, a massive step towards fulfilling the ambitious promise first made by Sir Richard in 2004.

At the same time as the world’s most famous entrepreneur was pledging to send tourists into space within a couple of years, Mr Palermo was living in Morley and working as a Woodside engineer.

“Towards the end of high school I knew I wanted to become an astronaut and became very passionate about human space flight,” he told The Sunday Times from the Californian home he shares with wife Nadia and sons Nicola, four, and Alessandro, three, in the Mojave Desert.

“There is no set path to any career in space.

“On New Year’s Eve, 2004, I had been looking into opportunities overseas and my then fiancée Nadia (the pair are high-school sweethearts after meeting at Chisholm Catholic College) basically said, ‘Are we doing this or not?’ And at that point we made the decision to give a career in space a shot.”

Two years later, with pit stops at a pair of London-based space start-ups and the International Space University in France, Mr Palermo became the first employee of The Spaceship Company, the manufacturing arm and sister business to Virgin Galactic.

Today, as president of The Spaceship Company, he oversees a staff of 500 and is ultimately responsible for delivering a fleet of spacecraft capable of shuttling amateur astronauts into space.

“It was a big gamble but you create your own luck,” Mr Palermo said.

Fortune may have played a small role in landing Mr Palermo his dream job, but in the actual business of developing spacecraft absolutely nothing is left to chance.

That is why 14 years after Sir Richard first made his promise, Virgin Galactic is yet to fly any of the more than 600 patrons — including celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Asthon Kutcher and Katy Perry — who have forked out up to $US250,000 for a seat.

In 2014, the mission hit a deadly setback when pilot error during a VSS Enterprise test flight, the predecessor to VSS Unity, caused the spacecraft to tear apart in mid-air, killing pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injuring co-pilot Peter Siebold.

“That was a tragic day for the whole program,” Mr Palermo said.

“But at that point The Spaceship Company had already completed building about 60 per cent of Unity and we were determined to make sure the loss of a brave colleague and lessons learnt on that day weren’t in vain.

“It wasn’t a decision made rashly but we knew we had a spacecraft and program that could still achieve the objective and we were able to soldier on.”

Almost four years later, that resolve is edging closer to paying off. In April, VSS Unity successfully completed its first rocket-powered flight and just four weeks ago broke new ground by reaching an altitude of 52km and Mach 2.47, or nearly 2.5 times the speed of sound (3060km/h).

By contrast, the average commercial plane cruises about 10.5km high and would not normally exceed 930km/h.

“What determines how fast and how high we go is how long we burn the rocket motor for,” Mr Palermo said.

“The maximum burn duration is about a minute and right now we are two-thirds of the way along (42-second burn time) in testing of that.”

Despite the promising signs, Mr Palermo is careful to avoid declaring a date for the maiden tourist flight, perhaps conscious of the multiple deadlines Sir Richard has set and been forced to wind back over the past decade.

“Richard is our biggest supporter and his job to set aggressive schedules for us, but we are never pressured to go fly,” Mr Palermo said.

“We let data and what we learn in each flight inform what we need to do in our test program. The program’s next big milestone will be reaching an altitude of at least 80.5km, the NASA-defined edge of space.

“That might not happen in the next flight but if we can burn Unity’s rocket engine for another 10 seconds that would go a significant way towards getting there.”

Fewer than 600 people have been to space since Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first human to do so in 1961, an historical average of fewer than 10 a year.

That number is poised to grow exponentially once the VSS Unity — capable of carrying six passengers and two pilots — is cleared for commercial use.

Forced to leave Perth to pursue his career in space, the 39-year-old is thrilled to be returning home in October for a conference hosted jointly by UWA and the Perth USAsia Centre, which will explore the challenges and opportunities presented by space exploration in the Indo-Pacific region.

Freshly minted Australian Space Agency head Megan Clark will join Mr Palermo at the October 8 event at Optus Stadium.

One of Dr Clark’s first orders of business is deciding on the site of ASA headquarters and Mr Palermo said WA had made a competitive bid.

Perth USAsia Centre chief executive Gordon Flake, who will also speak at the October 8 conference, said as the centre of government and policy Canberra made more sense.

“That said, however, there can and should be a role for WA because a space agency is not a single office,” Professor Flake said. “Rather it will be a network of capabilities and institutions, and in that context, there is no question that a significant part of the function of the new space agency should be in WA.”