Nearly every year I come to London to attend the annual World Travel Mart, one of the largest annual travel exhibitions, but this time I arrived on Sunday to find the headlines all about a different kind of tourism. The Sunday Times of London's lead headline read "Branson's space dream lies shattered in the desert."
That, of course, refers to the accident in the Mojave Desert on Friday when Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo prototype broke up in flight after being released by its mother ship, WhiteKnightTwo, and igniting its rocket engine. One test pilot was killed and a second was severely injured. Speculation has swirled around whether a new kind of rocket fuel mixture was the underlying cause of the crash, or whether the rocket engine itself was to blame, but it will take months for the company, as well as federal and local authorities to figure it out.
I've been a keen observer of Branson's Virgin Galactic ever since he launched the company. I was there at a technology conference in New York less than 10 years ago when Branson unveiled the designs for his space tourism ship and the mother ship that takes it up into the stratosphere. I met Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo astronaut who went to the moon, at that conference.
In 2011, I interviewed Branson for TravelPulse TV when he celebrated Virgin Atlantic's 25th anniversary of flying between London and Miami. Part of that interview focused on the continued progress of Virgin Galactic and space tourism.
I also have attended a number of Virtuoso events where the focus was on space tourism. The luxury travel network is one of the designated "sellers" of space travel in the U.S. through its of high-end travel agencies. Indeed, roughly 100 Virtuoso agents have become Accredited Space Agents who can sell Virgin Galactic's space trips.
Virgin Galactic's space experiences now cost roughly $250,000 each, including several days of training and the flight itself. Indeed, the company has reportedly received more than $80 million in bookings, some from celebrities and others from enthusiasts eager to be among the first to experience space tourism.
As far as I can tell, there has been no rush by these people to cancel their flight plans, though obviously there will be another delay before commercial flights can begin. The Sunday Times article pointed out that several of those who had signed up for Virgin Galactic flights publicly declared they would still fly.
"The best thing we can do to honor the person who died and the one who got injured is to continue the mission," said Per Wimmer, an Danish entrepreneur and adventurer, who 10 years ago paid for his ride in full as one of the first 100 people to sign up. "We must determine the cause of the crash so the loss of life was not in vain."
At the same time, Wimmer, as quoted in The Times article, said the crash had been like "a dagger in the heart" of his dream of being the first Dane in space.
On the other hand, clearly there will be a major delay in space tourism until Virgin Galactic and government officials determine the causes of the crash. John Zarnecki, chairman of the U.K. Space Agency Science Policy Advisory Committee, as quoted in the Sunday Times, predicts there will be no commercial space flights on Virgin Galactic until at least 2020. For his part, Branson maintains he will fully refund anyone who wants to cancel their booking, though some press reports say Virgin Galactic has already spent the some of the money it was paid for the trips.
Of course, this isn't the first time Virgin Galactic has had an accident. People often forget that three people lost their lives during a ground test of the company's rocket engine in 2007. That was another setback, but Virgin Galactic managed to overcome it and get to actual flight testing this year.
If somehow Virgin Galactic does fail, there are nearly 15 private companies engaged in some sort of commercial space tourism or space cargo initiatives, including Orbital Sciences, PlanetSpace, SpaceX, XCOR and others. None of these companies, however, is as far along in development as Branson's project.
Indeed, the 2014 World Travel Market Industry report, released Nov. 3, found that 34 percent of industry executives surveyed say space tourism will be in place by 2049. In the long run, people will be attracted to space tourism and it won't take one test site crash in the desert to put an end to that. Of course, just how significant a segment of the industry space tourism will become remains to bee seen. The survey also found that two thirds of industry executives surveyed don't see it as something that will be a major factor in the next three decades.
So is this the end of Sir Richard's Virgin Galactic? I doubt it. Branson has been highly committed to realizing his vision in almost any endeavor he's focused on. He's a risk taker and someone who continues to push the envelope, regardless of how ambitious the project seems to be. And he's already vowed publicly to continue with his quest to develop space tourism.
Indeed, anyone who saw how Branson repeatedly pushed his high-altitude balloon flights knows how willing he is to put his personal safety on the line for his projects. And he's already said he will be on the first space commercial flight. Let's just hope that in five to six years time, he's still on track to do just that, along with all the other customers who have signed up for flights.
The prospects for space tourism may have received a blow in the last few days, but in the end there will be a demand and a market for such travel.
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