My concern is about the safety side of things. From what I've read other people in the industry were scathing of Branson after the accident a few years ago where a spacecraft was destroyed. I don't know whether the criticisms were valid or if the critics just didn't like their patch being invaded by a rich amateur; and if the former, whether the shortcomings have been addressed. I'll leave that to people in the know.
Don't worry. NASA, Virgin Galactic's operations are regulated by the FAA so... oh... right.
I saw a rant by Steve Shives about how he's salty about these flights and wants real astronauts back. It was a douchier echo of arguments I've heard before about how the age of the eccentric billionaire isn't inspiring the way the golden age of NASA was.
The thing is, I think this really is rose tinted nostalgia goggles. NASA was achieving the most (in human spaceflight; for the purposes of this argument, that's what I'm talking about) when it was running on unashamed willy waving. When that factor became less powerful, things got more stagnant. For the likes of Shives, NASA achieved enough for them to believe that its drive was the furthering of human endeavour, a true proto-Starfleet exploring strange new worlds, but the truth is it was never that ideal. Throughout the decades of stagnation they could hope that maybe it would be this year that the president and Congress would give NASA the support they needed to become proto-Starfleet, but this was always a forlorn hope.
That was what has Shives so miffed. The arrival of these market disruptors has forced him to face the reality that NASA was never what he wanted to believe it was.
But there is something else. Shives wants real astronauts back. He talks about how he regards them as heroes. But the age of hero astronaut was always going to be temporary. No-one thinks of the guy flying the A350 from Heathrow to JFK as a hero, even though their flight is far more of a feat than what Lindburgh did. Even an Airbus test pilot isn't regarded as a hero. Aviation is routine now, mundane. If we are to progress, that is what space is to become. Seeing Branson go to (almost) space is a kick in the teeth because it heralds the post-astronaut age. One where going to space is the realm of the ordinary guy, not the hero. Branson is an ordinary guy except for his wealth and all that wealth did was get him an earlier ticket. But the idea is that where the super rich go now, in a few years, the economically average will follow. What Shives really wants is to trap spaceflight in amber, fossilised in a state of perpetual novelty. Perpetual novelty is of course an oxymoron. And it is having to face this truth that upsets him.
Really, this is a very exciting time. Space travel is no longer at the whim of the government with a willy to wave or pork to pack in barrels. The richest men in the world aren't doing this because they want to make money. They already have it all and they didn't obtain it by crazy ventures like this. They're doing this because they think space travel is cool. The profit component is simply necessary to make it stick this time. In a way, they represent the ideal of space flight as a human endeavour more than NASA ever did. But it is not what the likes of Shives spent their childhoods imagining. Their journey to coming to terms with that has only just begun.
True, Bezos, Branson and Musk put a big share of their ego into this, but a Youtuber has no business criticising others for narcissism.
