Why I have paid $250,000 to go to space with Virgin Galactic

Last summer, I got the first glimpse of what Virgin Galactic’s commercial passenger cabin would look like during an unveiling and virtual tour of the interior of the VSS Unity, which will be used later this year to shoot the first commercial passengers into space for a 90-minute extravaganza, including four minutes of weightless cabin roaming.

In May, the spaceship will take its next text flight with two pilots, followed by two more with full crews in the summer, the second of which will demonstrate the full private astronaut experience, with Richard Branson aboard. There will then be one more flight in the autumn, before the Future Astronauts begin their journeys next spring.

This week, Virgin Galactic unveiled VSS Imagine, its second spaceship model, which feels symbolic because coupled with VSS Unity, it’s the beginning of a ‘fleet’ and given the company’s plan to take tens of thousands of commercial customers into space, a fleet they will need. They invited ‘Future Astronaut’ Dee Chester, to witness it being towed out of the hangar at Spaceport America in New Mexico for the first time.

“I fell in love with space when I was five years old,” says Chester, a retired science teacher from Costa Mesa, California, one of the first six hundred people to buy a $250,000 ticket for a trip to space with Virgin Galactic, joining its Future Astronaut community. “I watched Alan Shepard blast off in an 83-foot missile 1961 and just said ‘I want to do that.’"

That first sighting triggered Dee’s lifelong obsession with space and she started collecting space-related memorabilia from a young age, eventually amassing a collection of 12,000 pieces, including everything from flight suits and autographed pictures to a 1988 Mercedes 560SL that once belonged to astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

“When Virgin Galactic was first starting out I thought ‘I want to do that, but teachers don’t get paid that much so I thought maybe I’ll win the lottery,” says Dee.

On the assumption this would never happen, Dee instead signed up with a company called Celestis: Memorial Spaceflights to have her ashes shot into space, as Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and psychedelic drugs advocate Timothy Leary did. But when Dee and her brother inherited their late parents house and sold it, Dee finally had the funds to buy a ticket, which she did.

“For me I’m most excited about the prospect of seeing the curvature of the earth, no borders and the intense beauty from space," says Dee. "I’ve spoken to several astronauts who say the brilliance of the earth and the blackness of space is something no camera can capture. So I’m looking forward to seeing that with my own two eyes.”

Interestingly, Dee doesn’t know how far down the list her name is, therefore how long she will have to wait for her flight, but she is so enjoying being part of Virgin Galactic's Future Astronaut community, which, she says, spans everyone from world travellers and explorers to 'common folk', that she doesn’t mind. Given she’s been waiting to do this since she was five, what’s a few more months?

“When I look at the community, we have space lovers, we have the guy who watched the first moon landing on a grainy black and white TV and thought ‘wow, I’ve now watched a man land on the moon and that has inspired my journey in life’, set up a business, did really well and now has the time and the money to do this,” says Clare Pelly, Head of the Astronaut Office.

“We also have the adventurers, who love climbing mountains, scaling the poles and diving down to the Titanic, those who love Virgin and Richard Branson and follow everything he does and then of course there are entrepreneurs, Jeff, Elon, Richard, household names involved in space who really want to be part of this and are really excited about where the industry is going. Some people re-mortgage their houses to do it.”

What has always been considered crucial to Virgin Galactic is the guest experience and making their Future Astronauts feel engaged in the whole process. From the moment you sign up, you are invited to a seat at the table, as it were, to give input on everything from seat design to the importance of making friends and family welcome at the spaceport.

“Our number one objective is to nurture and foster that sense of community so that people feel like being part of this group is as valuable as the space flight itself so over the years we’ve grown to having a very strong, very engaged community,” says Pelly.

“Many people say I’m having such a fun time in the lead up, I can’t wait to fly but I don’t want it to all be over when I do fly because I’ve met so many lifelong friends and I’ve done so many great things along the way.”

Virgin Galactic puts a big emphasis on seeing things from the human perspective and creating a set-up that will maximise the transformational experience for its customers. While it is clearly not the only company on the road to commercialising space travel, it feels that it has the edge in terms of the experience it will provide the traveller with.

“We brought in a gentleman called Joe Rohde, who does Imagineering for Disney, who is also in the explorer’s club and a conservationist,” says Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier, “to focus on the detail of the experience so when you get these moments of weightlessness, of looking back at earth, its all been set up for you being able to get the most out of it.”

“Doing something like this is known to provide a cognitive shift in perspective when astronauts come back down again, it's called the overview effect,” adds Pelly. “They look back down at earth from space and realise we live in this tiny blue marble and that we need to look after it. So we hope to be providing a platform for people to be able to share that with other people.”

On watching the new VSS Imagine being pulled out of the hangar for the first time, Dee is unequivocal: “To see the spaceship was very emotional for me. You’re sitting there like a proud parent, just grinning. It was really neat to see her being towed out into the daylight.”

Is she not in the slightest bit scared about going into space?

“This is going to sound kinda weird but I figure if I die doing it, I’ll die doing the thing I’ve always wanted to do. That’s not going to happen, of course. But what a way to go – half way to heaven!”

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