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Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space
quizdog writes "The latest issue of
Wired has a story on Sir Richard Branson and the history of the Virgin Empire, focusing on his latest venture of partnering with Scaled Composites and Burt Rutan to bring the
X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne hybrid rocket technology to the point where paying passengers can slip those 'surly bonds' of the atmosphere. Starting
at just $200,000 a pop - any chance of a volume discount?" We first mentioned this a while back, but Wired's coverage is nice to see as well.
Rocket Man
Richard Branson conquered the world. Now he wants to fly you to space.
By Spencer Reiss
One lightly frozen billionaire has just climbed down from the port wing of a Virgin Atlantic 747 parked at the edge of a runway at Mojave Airport. It's a blustery gray morning in California's southern desert, and Virgin in chief Richard Branson has spent more than an hour standing in the wind, waiting to tape the opening sequence of his new reality show, Rebel Billionaire. The jet's not going anywhere, either: It's a mothballed reserve plane, prettied up just for the shoot. "We've been thinking about sinking her in the Caribbean for divers," says Branson, deep-sixing hot cocoa from a styrofoam cup.
Suddenly the sun pops out. Branson clambers back up onto the wing and runs through his paces again for the boom-rigged camera: crossed-arm stance, million-mile gaze across the desert, then a quick turn as the lens swoops in for a close-up, with a tease of that famous toothy grin and a glint of sky-blue eyes. Take that, Donald Trump! The rest of the cast hustles out onto the wing, the camera whirs again, and it's a wrap. To celebrate, Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, 54-year-old lord of a $9 billion-a-year global empire, joins his happy TV troupe in mooning the crew. Everyone cracks up.
Branson has been mugging and grinning, diving and rappelling, ballooning and mooning his way to extreme mogulhood for nearly 40 years. (He started his first business, a magazine, while still in boarding school.) In that time, his Virgin Group has expanded from a funky record business into a sprawling keiretsu encompassing air travel, cell phones, train travel, soft drinks, African safaris, digital downloads, and Caribbean hideaways. Branson's own Virgin Island - no kidding - is available starting at $25,000 a day. All of which adds up to a personal fortune pegged by Forbes at $2.2 billion.
Despite such a dazzling career, the business world has always been ambivalent toward Britain's best-known entrepreneur. He launches trendy companies the way Trump builds casinos. But a farsighted innovator like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos or even Southwest Airlines' Herb Kelleher he is not. Branson traffics in opportunism. He spots a stodgy, old-line industry, rolls out the Virgin logo, sprinkles some camera-catching glitter, and poof - another moneymaker. While that formula has kept him in champagne and headlines, no Virgin business has ever changed the world.
Until now. Mojave Airport isn't just where aging jets wait to die; it's where the dusty dream of commercial space travel is finally coming alive. Last summer, a tiny winged wonder called SpaceShipOne spiked 62 miles into the desert sky on its way to nailing the $10 million X Prize for the first sustainable civilian suborbital flight. The world's stuffed-shirt airline chiefs took one look and went back to worrying about fuel prices. Branson took one look at the gleaming white carbon-fiber spaceship and said, Beam me up.
The upshot is Virgin Galactic, the world's first off-the-planet private airline. Under a deal still being negotiated with SpaceShipOne's owners - Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and legendary Mojave airplane designer Burt Rutan - Virgin will pay up to $21.5 million for an exclusive license to SpaceShipOne's core design and technologies. Another $50 million will go to Rutan's company Scaled Composites to build five tricked-out passenger spaceships. An equal amount will be invested in operations, including a posh Virgin Earth Base somewhere in the California desert. Total outlay: $121.5 million. Business plan: 50 passengers a month, paying $200,000 each. Core product: a two-hour flight to an apex beyond Earth's atmosphere, wrapped in a three-day astronaut experience. Lift off: T-minus three years.
Of course, Virgin Galactic is a tiny bit riskier than the typical Branson venture. For starters, the first passenger-carrying Virgin spaceship - already dubbed VSS Enterprise - is still just a glow on Rutan's co
Does this make him a member of the 600-mile high club?
What a minute...there's no magazine called Weird, is there?
If only Branson would take a virgin into space... what bliss.
anyone else besides me take a double-take at that article title?
No, fatass -- in fact, you're gonna have to pay extra.
Sounds like a promising XXX title. :)
My rights don't need management.
No, Slashdotters... he didn't take one of YOU into space... they are referring to a company in the article.
[i]Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space[/i]
Where did he find manage to find a real Virgin?
Thanks... I'll be here all week.
I thought: Gee, I wish I was that lucky geek!
In todays world, you wish you can find a virgin. Haven't he learnt anything from indian public school scandle yet.
to comment on one of the most unintentionally funny/"don't editors look at these things before posting" moments on ./ I've seen in a while.
Bravo.
And on that note let the bad sex jokes begin...
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Now, when are they gonna cut the novelty crap and make it into a viable transportation alternative? At $200K a pop, that's one hell of a business expense. How much does coach cost?
Sir Richard gracing the cover of Wired has been staring at me from the top of my toilet magazine stack for weeks. Good story and all, but not exactly what you could call current.
Humanity to spread to outer space, before cleaning up the mess it still has on planet Earth. Is it a case of running away from the problem, or spreading the problem to other planets and colonies in the solar system? Rumor has it that terrorist groups are also working on improving their technology so they can explode a satellite outside an geosynchronus nightclub or such.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
How's he going to manage to get the whole corporation up there?
That's a bit pricey, even by commercial airline standards.
So after the handful of people that are both rich & interested have taken the trip, what's Sir Richard going to do with his space travel business?
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
a stor?
What's a "stor" ?
Oh, did you mean STORY?
Also, why does Slashdot report on every issue of Wired? If you want to read Wired, then get a subscription!
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
I don't know, but has anyone ever had sex in space before? I think if that is the case we are all virgins in uncharted territory he,he.. Is anyone willing to go where no man has gone before???
Going into space has been a dream since I was watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969.
Paying $200.000 for a trip that has been my dream for over 30 years is cheap, esp compared to the $20.000.000 pricetag for the Russian trip to the space station. it's a bargain and I want one, Seriously!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
ok go ahead and mark this off topic but what gives with slashdot every month running the majority of the latest wired mag here too? Does /. get paid for it? Wouldn't it be easier to have one post a month 'go look at wired.com before we post all their stories here'
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Oddly enough that company appears to have no revenue.....
What is this? This is like the third story in the past few days lifted from Wired. And it's Old News. It's in this month's printed issue, which I've already read.
Slashdot is morphing into Slashdull.
a little old? I mean I got this issue a while back. Why the wait slashdot?
Space travel is controlled space travel. That means travelling into space, establishing a controlled orbit, and then a controlled descent back to earth. That's space travel.
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight. Lots of people could shoot a projectile from one end of the field to the other, which is all (effectively) that was accomplished by Burt Rutan.
I don't want to be a big, wet blanket here, and I don't want to say nothing has been accomplished; it was a necessary first step. But it ain't space travel. Orbital insertions are two orders of magnitude harder.
I don't want marketing, I want real space travel, and that requires being a little harsh on all the marketing that surrounds this.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
>'surly bonds' of the atmosphere
1. I think the biggest bond to the planet is gravity, not friction.
2. Why would the "bonds" be described as sullen ill-humored, threatening, or arrogant?
Dick to take Virgin into Orbit.
:D
Try the veal.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
From the article:
But look at the upside. The total price tag [for Virgin Galactic] is half the cost of a single Airbus A340-600 - and Virgin Atlantic ordered 26 of those last summer. In return, Branson gets bragging rights to one of the cooler breakthroughs of the early 21st century, with rocket-powered marketing opportunities that could fuel excitement - and sales - in his entire 200-company holding group.
People often complain about how much stuff like this supposedly costs, but it's interesting to see what a small amount it is compared to how much is typically thrown around in the airline industry. The marketing value alone is probably worth the cost of the fleet.
Hmmm.
Virgin.
MILF.
Enter cognitive dissonance, stage left.
... who thought someone got deflowered in space.
...but Slashdot has the original
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
... a virgin in space, eh? So which Slashdotter is going?
I really wish /. would make a section just for Wired article reposting, so those of us who read them already can ignore these when they dribble out a couple weeks after we get them via snail mail.
Sounds like a bad Japanese Hentai Title: "Sir Richard takes a virgin 3"
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.sex.movies /msg/438b896ff714b0ef
VIRGINS in space, from the BLASTING OFF department? Hah!
A blog like any other.
I saw on Branson's (failure of a ) reality show that the contestants made commercials for Virgin Galactic, but I have yet to see them on TV. I think he thought they were too horrible to use, or perhaps didn't want to spend the money and considered his reality show to be, essentially, a free commercial.
Wait a second...
---
Watch me prove I'm clueless here
More like Dirty Whore!
Yes, but fat people pay extra.
Do they take air miles?
Sex in space
Sir Richard Branson has his way with virgin in space! How vile! I thought knights were supposed to protect maidens!
better get super miles for my mileage card...or a free "escort" service with that $200k price tag.
Well if you're gonna go there, check the # of NY Times articles. All that reg. horseshit aside, I've usually read this stuff in AP News or the NY Times way before it gets through Slashdot. This is not unusual though, there's a lot of cross-feeding in that biz.
:-)
It's the sparkling commentary we're here for.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Stop plugging Wired already!
BA wouldn't sell him all the concordes, he didn't fly round the world in his balloon, so he had to go one better and fly into space, typical.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
That is what firefox said...
Now that's what I call a troll.
I second this. I was going to post a similar comment. I received that Wired issue several weeks ago.
"Dick takes Virgin into Space" ...or at least it should have made use of the nickname for Richard. :)
In December, Inc. Magazine also selected Burt Rutan as Entrepreneur of the Year. The article is a very good read, and gives a lot of details about Rutan's management style.
A snippet:
As a manager, Rutan has proven intuitively adept at inspiring loyalty and extraordinary work. He doesn't worry so much about the formal background of the engineers he hires. He looks for people who share his passion for aircraft design and gives those who have it free rein. Instead of the specialists sought by aerospace companies, he encourages his staffers to remain generalists who can design anything from a fuselage to a door handle and then go into the shop and build it. Chief engineer Matthew Gionta recalls starting off at the company right out of graduate school in 1994 and being handed the project-leader slot on an ultra-high-tech unmanned aircraft. "What I had to learn on the job made my formal education pale in comparison, but I had to learn it because no one else was going to do it for me," Gionta says. "The stress took years off my life, but when you get that kind of responsibility, it's hard not to feel ownership."
Rutan is loath to codify his approach to managing. "I don't like rules," he says. "Things are so easy to change if you don't write them down." But one way or another, he has communicated a few simple principles to employees. One is that when it comes to safety issues -- and in aircraft design, almost everything is a safety issue -- everyone should be quick to raise questions. Rutan makes sure that when people at Scaled point out their own mistakes, they're applauded rather than reprimanded. And instead of extensively analyzing a design before building it, a notion that's axiomatic in the aerospace industry, Rutan pushes his people to get a first version built quickly, test it, and fix it. Says Gionta: "Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding."
Yipee! it must be time for another issue of Wired!
It must be because the damn lazy editors of slashdot have posted at least 3 stories from wired in the few couple days.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
a slashdot member in space! who would have thought they would pass the physical endurance tests?!
-judging another only defines yourself
Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? Nerd who never get laid or something?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
orbital insertions virgins 100 times harder vacuum reentry keep it coming! keep it coming!
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
N.B. I have it framed and hanging in my bedroom. It seems quite the apt description of what they are attempting.
P.S. John Magee was a pilot in the RCAF, No. 412 squadron, during WWII. He wrote the poem when he was only 19. He died a few months later.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
they can figure out how to snort coke in zero-g.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Virgin Galactic: to boldly go where no man has gone before
I thought space lost its virginity a few decades ago? I guess its claiming to be "born again".