Stephen Attenborough, CEO of Virgin Galactic

View the original article in Perspective Magazine


Will we ever see timeshare In Space?
Exclusive Perspective Interview with Stephen Attenborough, CEO of Virgin Galactic by David Lilley, Lilo Media International.

Will we ever see timeshare in space? Twenty years ago many observers would have treated this question with
nothing more than a swift but ultimately dismissive conclusion. Finding a way to get ordinary, unqualified people into space has frequently been regarded as far too complicated, far too risky and far too expensive. Outside of qualified and meticulously trained astronauts, only a privileged few wealthy individuals have experienced life outside of the earth’s atmosphere. It has typically cost these fortunate few six months of their lives and a cool $20 million for the privilege.

Thanks to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, the next decade seems set to see thousands of ordinary people experiencing the extraordinary – a share of time, all be it a modest amount of time, in outer space!

Virgin Galactic is set to become the world’s first spaceline, offering passengers a groundbreaking opportunity to become the first ever nonprofessional astronauts. Virgin Galactic will own and operate its privately built spaceships, modeled on the remarkable, history-making Spaceship One. Virgin appears well positioned to scribe this amazing mark into the history of mankind. The company’s vast experience in aviation, adventure, luxury travel and cutting-edge design, the pioneering passion of the remarkable Richard Branson and the unique technology developed by Burt Rutan seem set to ensure an unforgettable experience
unlike any other available to mankind.

I met up with the CEO of Virgin Galactic, Stephen Attenborough, to discuss the detail behind this revolutionary new company.

Q. So Stephen, what was your background before you came to Virgin?

A. Well, the first thing to say is I am not an astronaut! Although I can remember being brought downstairs in 1969 to see those black and white pictures of Neil and Buzz walking on the moon. I can’t say that space ever really played a huge part in my life or career choice previously. I had spent 20 years or so working in the City in investment management. Through a little bit of being in the right place at the right time and having some of the right business background, I found myself as Commercial Director of Virgin Galactic.

Q. And what a fascinating business Virgin Galactic is Stephen! One marvels at the wonders of modern technology. Please talk us through what the consumer will experience on Virgin Galactic. For example, how long does it take to get to space? What will people experience when they are there? Will they experience things such as zero-gravity?

A. Firstly, this is what we call a suborbital trip. It is the first step in space tourism. It involves an incredible blast into space, followed by a brief period in space itself and then back through the atmosphere and down to a runway landing. So the whole trip will take about 2 – 2 ½ hours from take off to touch down. The actual trip will be preceded by three days of training and preparation, which we will make a pretty cool experience in its own right.

The journey starts with a traditional runway take off. The passengers will be sitting in a six seater cabin, which will be the approximate size of an executive jet interior. There will be two pilots up at the front. The spaceship itself will be hanging underneath a specially designed carrier aircraft, which, after take off will circle up to around 50,000 feet.

This is the altitude that Concord used to cruise at, so you are actually quite close to the atmosphere’s edges. And then there will be a count down and the space ship will be released. You will have a few moments of quiet gliding, travelling very slowly, maybe about 100 knots at that stage. Then the rocket motor will ignite and your world changes pretty quickly!

From being in normal gravity or 1G you will instantly accelerate to over 3 ½ Gs as the space craft powers ahead and climbs into a near vertical climb. For about 90 seconds you have got that incredible acceleration which will take you up to over 2 ½ thousand miles per hour or the equivalent of Mach 3.8. This is faster than the proverbial speeding bullet. Outside the windows, as you are going through that acceleration, you will see that the sky changing colour gradually, from blue through shades of purple into black, as you escape from the atmosphere. Then the rocket motor gets shut down and you experience the most incredible contrast. From having those high G levels you go to zero gravity – instantly. So the gravitational force which most of us, in
fact all of us, have been subjected to since the day we were born, suddenly disappears and there is no up and no down. At the same time from a lot of noise and vibration you are in absolute silence because there is no atmosphere outside. There is no friction of air, just the silence of space, which is, evidently, awe-inspiring.

At that stage we are going to let the passengers release their restraints and push away from their seats to experience what it means to be in zero gravity. All our customers have told us that that is the one of the key things they want to experience. You cannot experience zero gravity by being strapped to your seat, so part of the output specification we gave to the designers of this space ship was that it needed to be a big enough and safe enough for our astronauts to float around the cabin and do just what they want to do in those magical moments.

The other thing of course is the view and I’m glad to say our spaceship has big windows. You will by now be far, far above the earth’s surface. You are going to be able to see back to a world which you have only seen in pictures before and you are going to be seeing it from the blackness of space. It’s a familiar map but, without any of the drawn in boundaries. You are going to be able to see just how thin the atmosphere is that protects the earth. If our customers are anything like the astronauts that have gone into space in the past, this will be a life changing part of the experience.

Most astronauts come back to earth with a very clear sense of the nature of our existence, of the fragility of the earth. We think there is a very large element of eco tourism here and that we may well find that some our customers become highly effective environmental activists!

And then eventually the period in space comes to an end. The Gs start to build up as the space craft comes back through the atmosphere. You are going to be lying down for that period so the seats will have reclined. The reason for this is to minimise the effects of G forces. At about 60-70 thousand feet the space craft will turn itself back into a glider and you are going to have a very pleasant half an hour or so of quite dynamic flying back down to the runway in the spaceport from where you took off.

Q. So on the return back into the earth’s atmosphere, there is no power? It literally is a glide back down to earth?


A. Yes. This is incredibly innovative and also a very safe part of the technology that we have licensed and are now developing. It was the inspiration of the designer and builder of the vehicles. Burt Rutan. He runs a company called Scaled Composites who are world leaders in composite aircraft design and have built some of the most innovative aircraft of the past 25 years. Burt knew that one of the great issues surrounding the commercialisation of space travel, of getting ordinary people into space, was always going to be about re-entry.

When you come back from space you are travelling fast. As you hit the upper atmosphere, the molecules of air collide with space craft, which traditionally is made out of metal and create a huge amount of heat through friction. The way that astronauts in non-reusable vehicles cope with this is with capsules that are pretty much bomb proof and capable of just falling through the atmosphere, glowing white hot with the astronauts huddled inside hoping for the best prior to a parachute splash-down. The Shuttle was the first attempt that a government Space Agency has had at really creating a re-usable manned space craft. The Shuttle flies back into the atmosphere, which is a great idea but requires the re-entry trajectory to be absolutely spot on.

So they have to have very sophisticated flight control systems to control that trajectory. They also have to have special heat proof tiles to protect the spaceship. The tiles of the shuttle have proven very unreliable. We have seen one total loss – an absolute tragedy, where tiles were damaged, heat got into the fuselage of the Shuttle and destroyed the flight control systems. The Shuttle went off course and, as we know, the whole crew was lost.

So this was an incredibly important aspect for us to get right. Burt’s approach was as an aero-dynamist rather than a rocket scientist. He took inspiration from the humble badminton shuttlecock. And he realised that if he could change the shape of his space plane when it was in space, so the wings rotated round and acted as giant “feathers” or air brakes, there was a possibility that not only would the space craft always come down in the right attitude, but its descent would also be slowed by the aero dynamic drag of those rotated wings. He calls it feathered re-entry or carefree re-entry and it works incredibly well. It is one of those innovations that just about anyone could have come up with, but nobody had. Burt tested this with our prototype, Spaceship One. They flew to space three times in 2004. It is an absolutely fantastic system and it really takes away all the danger that has been associated with re-usable space craft re-entry of the past.

Q. From the passenger enquiries you have had so far, what level of interest is there from the safety element?

A. That is an interesting question. We are going to be spending a very serious amount of development capital on ensuring safety particularly through a rigorous flight test programme. We are putting our brand, our passengers and indeed our owner into the spaceship so we have to deliver the maximum levels of safety.

We have wanted to do this for many years. We looked at other technologies and we were always put off by the fact that they did not, in our view, have the potential of being developed in a way which were going to create the appropriate levels of safety. Many people are still scared of getting onto aeroplanes today and presumably more people will be a bit more scared about getting on to a spaceship. We have to be able to demonstrate, through the excellence of the operation and through the basic design of the technology that passengers will come back safely. We have never been driven by time constraints. We don’t have a date of launch. We will not publish a date of launch until we are ready because we have to be driven by safety.

We are about to go into our test flight programme for the new vehicles we have developed – WhiteKnight2 (the carrier aircraft) and Spaceship Two.

We think it will take 12-18 months. However, if it takes 2 years then it takes 2 years. This is a really incredible opportunity for a step-change in space access. With the benefits that this can bring, we have to get it right first time.

Q. What level of testing will be done in terms of the aircraft going up into space? How many times will trial trips happen without paying passengers before you feel comfortable to send paying passengers to space?

A. To a large extent it depends on how successful those test flights are. I would say the best guess is that there will probably be about 30 space flights before we take any non test pilots up there. There will be a lot more test flights but they won’t all go to space. The way that we will organise our test flight programme is by doing it in small incremental stages. You never want to be biting off more than you can chew so you can cope with the unexpected without loosing people or equipment.

Q. When you are ready to go to launch, how many trips to space do you expect in a one year period?

A. Well our objective at the moment is to take 500 people to space in the first year. The space craft have actually got the capability of flying much more frequently than that, but we believe, again for reasons of safety, that we need to bed the operation down, so a flight a week seems to be a sensible way of starting. We can increase the frequency gradually as we become more familiar with the technology and the whole operation of getting people trained and prepared. So 500 in the first year, but if the market is as big as we believe it is, we should be able to fly 50,000 in the first 10 years, and bearing in mind that only 450 people have been to space in the last 47 years that is quite an achievement.

Q. Absolutely. What will it cost the consumer to have this experience?

A. The starting price is $200,000, so broadly speaking £100,000 or Euros, which is a lot of money in some ways but considering the expense of space travel in the past, represents exceptional value!. There are three things to say about this. The first is that this is a price which we have set relative to the development spend in the project, which is going to be at least $220 million by the time we start to make a profit – so it’s realistic. I came out of a traditional business and into Virgin Galactic, rather than as a space nut into Virgin Galactic, largely because Richard Branson’s and Virgin’s objective here is to make this venture commercially
viable. This is not a publicity stunt or the fantasy of a billionaire. This is a business which if we’re successful with it could lead to enormous and fast innovation in an area that badly needs it.

The second thing to say is that there have been five or six private individuals who have travelled to space with the Russians. Admittedly, they have gone to the International Space Station but they have paid around $20 million for their experience. They have had to learn Russian and spend 6 months in Star City – effectively they have had to become government astronauts. So this is a big step forward.

And lastly when we started this business, Richard Branson was very clear that even if we are a monopoly, which we probably will be for a while, we will not act as a monopolist in terms of price. We will bring the price down as far and as fast as we are able to, because we know there are many thousands of people out there that would love to experience space. As we reduce the price, so we open that opportunity to more and more people.

Q. You said 6 people could use the cabin. I imagine it doesn’t afford itself to luxury. Can passengers expect the same great service that one gets on a Virgin Atlantic flight in terms of food and beverage?

A. They can expect fantastic service, but it will be a little different from Virgin Atlantic. I don’t think we need an in-flight entertainment system because that is all going to be going on outside the window. We cannot serve food and drink at the moment because this is a pretty intense flight and food and drink in space has a tendency to float around and make a bit of a mess. And the other interesting question – something that you haven’t asked but that I will answer anyway, is that there are no toilets on board! This means we will be encouraging people to think about their diet and how much they are eating and drinking before they get on board.

Q. Does that not mean that people may have to wear a catheter bag?

A. One of the many great innovations from NASA is fantastic space nappies. I have to say I never worn one personally (yet!) but I understand they are an extremely comfortable way of dealing with that situation. We have got to think about the well being of each individual passenger but we also have to think of the well being of the passengers they are flying with.

Q. Thank you Stephen. Virgin Galactic is an extraordinary vision. What I would like to do now, if I may, is talk about the Virgin Brand. No interview with any senior representative from Virgin would be complete without asking about the Virgin brand, particularly as many of the readers of Perspective Magazine aspire to have a more respected brand themselves. Virgin probably has one of the best known and respected brands in the world. If you could give a timeshare resort several nuggets of advice, in terms of what makes a great brand, what would they be?


A. Probably right at the heart of what we do is understanding what PR means. People say that Virgin is great at PR and we are. We get into the papers a lot, but that is not what we really mean about PR. PR for us is our total relationship with the public and I think understanding that customers need to trust and love you when things go right and when things go wrong is a great lesson to learn. It is an easy thing to say but what does it actually mean? Firstly it’s a case of treating your customers, or your potential customers, almost like friends, people you have relationships with. You take them into your confidence so as a company we tend to announce our plans very early.

Richard very often starts talking about business ideas publicly very early in the process. That was the case with Virgin Galactic. In 1999, he announced that we would like to take people to space within a decade. This is something I think we will achieve, so we announce early and then tell the story – warts and all. If we have set-backs, which we may have in this type of development programme because what we are doing is not easy, we will talk about them, not hide them. I think consumers trust us and the love people seem to have for Virgin comes from that openness and that candour.

The other thing I would say is that we have a philosophy in the way we treat our staff, which puts them as our number one asset, ahead of shareholders and even customers We do that firstly by giving them a product that they are really proud to sell and proud to represent. If people are proud and they love what they are doing, then they tend to do it well and customers buy from them and shareholders are happy. We also try to remove stuff, particularly some of the traditional workplace formalities which just get in the way of this, and ultimately serves no useful purpose.

We want people to be happy at work. We want them to use the best of what they have got, so we will often have a notion of a role we want performed but finesse that role once we have got the person on board, because they can often bring a unique element to it… or a way of doing it that suits their own style. This plays to their strengths and makes them more effective.

I think the other consideration rests with our structure. We are a relatively large group, with over 40,000 employees who work for Virgin branded companies and a turnover of around $20 billion a year. This is a large amount by any standard. However, I think if you ask most people who work for a Virgin company, they do not feel that they work for a conglomerate but a company that is in control of its own destiny with good access to senior management and a lot of say in the way that the product or the service is delivered. This has been a very deliberate policy. Virgin is essentially a branded venture capital company. The Virgin mother-ship provides the seed capital, appoints the management to incubate the business and sends it on its way. So Virgin companies operate within a common set of values, but with a large degree of independence. It’s an unusual and entrepreneurial structure which gives people empowerment and responsibility and which keeps companies relatively small. We would rather be best than biggest.

Q. Richard Branson always appears very accessible to the press from the outside. Working within Virgin and being in a senior position, I guess you have reasonable access to the man but how accessible is Richard really? How much time does he spend with the Virgin staff across the different companies?

A. Well I can only talk from my own experience but he has been extremely accessible and takes a very personal interest in how we are developing Galactic. Part of this is probably because he can’t wait to go to space but he also wants us to be a successful part of the Group. He will often be on the phone suggesting ideas that I probably should have thought of myself! I suspect the experience is the same for other companies across the Group. Unsurprisingly he appears to be always on the move, is very driven and as importantly always appears to be having fun – suffice to say – a great role model!

Q. Stephen, thank you. The interview would not be totally complete unless I ask you about your opinions of the timeshare industry that Perspective Magazine supports. The timeshare industry constantly talks about how we can improve, how we can build the brand that consumers respect more? When someone says the word ‘timeshare’ to you, what images does it conjure in your mind, and what are your own personal experience of the product?

A. Ok. I suppose like many consumers who have never actually had the experience of timeshare (I have never owned timeshare) my perceptions are driven very much by press, by media, by reputation. I think for me, timeshare always seemed an incredibly good and sensible idea. A lovely concept where there shouldn’t be any losers. But for some reason, and certainly historically, it had gone through a stage in the development of the concept or maybe in the implementation of the business idea, where it attracted some bad press and I am as aware of that as anyone else.

Funnily enough I used to go on holiday to the Isles of Scilly to a privately owned island called Tresco. They operated timeshare there and it was fantastic. In fact there was so much demand; you had to put your name on a list for years in order to get the opportunity to buy one. You’d always get your money back plus interest if you wanted to sell and so I was always convinced this was a great idea. However, the wider industry needed to shed a bit of a reputation. I spoke at the OTE seminar in Portugal last year and I had 4 or 5 hours experience of the timeshare industry. It seems to me that timeshare is an industry that is getting to grips with its challenges. There appears to be an understanding of the way that the leisure industry is changing and evolving,
that timeshare, or at least derivatives of timeshare, have become more and more applicable and attractive.

Like I have said, I only had a fleeting experience of timeshare last November but it seems to me that the OTE is a very professional body, with professional standards, who are absolutely determined to put any wrongs to right and just get on with the job.

Q. The next time you share a business breakfast with Richard then you might want to mention Virgin timeshare!

A. I might, although whether that will be in orbit or on earth, I don’t know!




Virgin Galactic unveil spaceship designs

Virgin Galactic herald’s ‘The Year of the Spaceship with the unveiling of the designs of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. Virgin Galactic today unveiled the design of its new, environmentally benign, space launch system based on the X Prize winning technology of SpaceShipOne, which successfully flew into space for the third time in October 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X Prize.

The construction of the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, or carrier aircraft, is now very close to completion at Scaled Compositesin Mojave, CA and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008. It is the world’s largest, all carbon composite aircraft; it has a unique high altitude lift capacity, capable of launching SpaceShipTwo and its eight astronauts into sub-orbital space flight. The WK2 mothership is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines which are amongst the most powerful, economic and efficient engines available. The WK2 mothership has also been designed to be capable of lifting other payload and launching it into space.

Whilst the two vehicles comprising the space launch system have been under construction, Virgin Galactic’s cadre of future astronauts has continued to grow strongly to well in excess of 200 individuals with around 85,000 registrations of interest to fly. Astronaut orientation for spaceflight is progressing well and already 80 of SpaceShipTwo’s first passengers have been through medical assessment and centrifuge training at the NASTAR facility in Philadelphia. Commenting on the unveiling, Burt Rutan, CEO of Scaled Composites, said: “Virgin Galactic produced a demanding output specification for the world’s first private human and payload space launch system. This required us to produce a safe but flexible design capable of multiple applications in new market sectors. I am confident that these vehicles, now in an advanced stage of construction, will achieve just that. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole team at Scaled Composites. “Looking up - way up!” is an expression we have shared since the X Prize began and now we are all excited that this year the dream will start to become a very tangible reality for everyone involved.”

Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, added: “The designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship are absolutely beautiful and surpass any expectations for the future of commercial spaceflight that we had when first registering the name Virgin Galactic in 1999. Burt and his team have done a fantastic job and I am also delighted with the wonderful vision that Foster and Partners, working with URS, have shown in the final designs for Spaceport America in New Mexico. Finally, we are all very excited about the prospect of being able to develop a bio-fuel solution for the space launch system and we are looking forward to working with Pratt and Whitney and Virgin Fuels to trial an appropriate bio mix for the PW308A engines that will be powering our new carrier aircraft.” Virgin Galactic will make further announcements regarding the progress of the launch system, development of its markets, the test flying program and start of commercial operations at Spaceport America in due course.
www.virgingalactic.com

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