Richard Branson’s Credibility Begins to Crumble
Richard Branson and then-Gov. Bill Richardson at Spaceport America in New Mexico in 2010. (Credit: Douglas Messier)
Richard Branson is beginning to take a pounding in the British media as the 10th anniversary of his announcement of SpaceShipTwo approaches next Saturday.
When he announced SpaceShipTwo on Sept. 27, 2004, Branson promised to be flying in only three years. “Within five years, Virgin Galactic will have created over 3,000 new astronauts from many countries,” Branson said.
Commercial flights are now running more than 7 years behind schedule, with the first flight unlikely before next February and possibly much later. Now the British media are beginning to notice.
Deep in the American West lies a vast, arid desert plain known as ‘Jordana de Muerto’, or ‘Journey of the Dead Man’. The desolate, sun-beaten expanse of deepest New Mexico is flat and deeply inhospitable.
Yet it is here, four hours’ drive from Albuquerque, that a security gate marks the entrance to perhaps the world’s most spectacular white elephant….
Talk your way in and you’ll find a huge futuristic glass, steel and concrete building designed by the superstar architect Sir Norman Foster.
No expense was spared. Indeed, it cost local taxpayers, who footed the entire bill, almost a quarter of a billion U.S. dollars.
Remarkably, every penny of this huge sum, every brick that was laid, and every tonne of publicly-funded concrete poured into the desert, has been devoted to a singular cause: putting Sir Richard Branson into space.
The $80m Virginauts stranded on Earth
London Sunday Times
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SIR RICHARD BRANSON is facing a backlash from aspiring astronauts who have booked a $250,000 seat on his space rocket after he revealed on an American television chat show the latest in a series of delays to the inaugural flight.
News of the latest setback to Branson’s commercial space programme came in an interview last week with David Letterman, the programme’s host, when the entrepreneur said he hoped to take the first commercial trip into space on Virgin Galactic in “February or March or next year”. He has previously said that he would be travelling into space by the end of this year.
The latest delay led to claims that the project was in crisis with some customers questioning whether the rocket would ever get into space.
Beam us up, Beardie!
Private Eye
WHEN will Sir Richard Branson launch himself into space? “What people forget is that it is rocket science,” he quipped in February. “It is complicated. But now every box has been ticked and we’re nearly there.” Er, how nearly? “We have a launch date this summer… By September, I hope to have gone to space.”
September is upon us, so presumably Beardie Lightyear is now aboard his rocket, preparing to slip the surly bonds of earth with a cry of “To infinity and beyond!” Or, on past form, perhaps not…
16 responses to “Richard Branson’s Credibility Begins to Crumble”
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“Private Eye” is all class, I see 😉
It definitely has been a while now.
I’m surprised we haven’t seen a test with the new motor yet.
Another bit of evidence of his failing credibility is the result of the Parabolic Arc poll as to how likely it is that Branson’s prediction of a SpaceShip Two flight into space early next year will turn out to be correct. The most popular of the four possible responses is “Highly unlikely” (around 39%). The least popular response is “Highly likely” (about 8%).
Here’s some Addam’s family morbidity for you. Given a mortality rate of 500 per 100,000 people (for an average age range of 40-50 years), of the 300 people on the waiting list, about 15 have missed their chance in the ten years that have passed. I hope none have passed and that Dr. Hawkings remains healthy enough to fly.
What is the critical path that has delayed the flight readiness of SS2? There might have been several in succession. Increasing funding to reduce development time becomes progressively ineffective as one increases funds (more chefs spoiling the broth). But one has to think that increased funding could of, should of reduced development time. One has to imagine that Branson wanted to see this project become profitable in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe also Branson recognizes that sending the 1%-ers on outer-space joy rides is not high on his priority list despite the coolness factor. Global warming, over-population, hunger, epidemics are some problems that his excess funds could go to instead.
On the other side, inadequate funding can delay developments indefinitely by limiting exploration of options and requiring work to be repeatedly started and stopped on the various components. If they spent some extra money on other hybrid fuels and oxidizers or all-liquid propulsion early on, it might have saved them money (or just saved them, period) in the long run.
It sounds to me a bit like they either got hung up on sunk costs or started believing their own marketing over their actual engineering results, and spent a lot of time and money trying to get the HTPB-N2O system to work when they should have been investigating other options.
Yes. Could not agree more; under-funding is not good either. If commenter Hemingway’s source from Glassdoor is real, there lies the problem. Bad management will trump any amount of money you throw at a project. It might also be why Virgin Galactic or Northrop Grumman were (apparently) reluctant to increase funding. Their top propulsion engineer just announced he is leaving – before certification or maiden flight. Greener pastures might all be to that but I doubt that. Also, Rutan was about to turn 70 and retired 3 years ago. Maybe thats all there is to it. Maybe there was also frustration due to the circumstances inside S.Composites. Also, Rutan might have caused the problem that this supposed engineer -spilling beans, has stated. Maybe Rutan surrounding himself with like-minded people which can be a management mistake. Surely he had skill sets to build SS1, Whiteknights and almost SS2 but he may have left behind a group that has floundered in managing an increasing company size. Scaled Composites core personnel including Rutan were not able to effectively scale up the company. Northrop Grumman, a big corp, is not a best choice for cleaning up a small company. Speculation but maybe someone has more solid evidence.
Let’s be frank. It’s beyond “begins to crumble”. Remember that Space Ship II will need to execute some number of manned test flights through a full flight – launch to full altitude to landing, before commercial service. Branson is unlikely to be on those flights. Optimistically, mid 2015 if the tests start in a month or two and turn-arounds are less than 90 days. Otherwise maybe December 2015.
SS2 is a suborbital vehicle. It will never “execute … through a full orbit”
Pardon, my mistake. I’ll fixed that. Thx.
“…without any particular left or right wing political bias” – sounds good to me.
A current Virgin Galactic aerospace engineer wrote the following on the Glassdoor blog: “Very bad management – boys club, do anything to keep up the image, out of touch, alienate staff, lack of career progression (unless you are in the club). Do the future of commercial space travel a favor and replace yourselves with commercially experienced managers. Focus on space tourism project at hand and get that working before getting carried away with future projects you don’t even know will work. And stop the favoritism.”
http://www.glassdoor.com/Re…
On October 14th the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight is sponsoring a tour of Spaceport America. As a publicity stunt by Virgin Galactic, you can view a mockup of SpaceShipTwo, and you will be allowed to take photos. Who knows when the real SpaceShipTwo will be ready for flight? That is the “$64,000 Dollar Question.”
http://www.ispcs.com/about_…
There was an article in the Arabian version of Business.com talking about some customers looking for their refunds back. One comment caught my eye where one customer commented that”
“I think it will fly, but I am not sure whether it will get me into
space as I was promised. If they don’t get above 60 miles I will
certainly be withdrawing my money. I don’t think you can be considered
an astronaut unless you cross that line.”
My question is whether Virgin is making representations that they can’t keep. I see nothing in the Commercial Space Act that allows space flight participants to be designated astronauts, and in fact the even the crew don’t qualify as astronauts. Probably an unrealistic expectation on the part of the consumer, but something that could cause Virgin headaches if and when it does get flying. The article link is here:
http://www.arabianbusiness….
Michael, thanks for making your points, those links to the customer discontent are interesting and in line with what we would expect at this point with all the waiting. When money is not object, time takes on supreme value: the only thing the über-rich CANNOT buy more of.
And, while we get your point about the astronaut title, what IS an astronaut? Or a kosmonaut? Or a spationaut or taikonaut? As you well know, none of those terms in themselves implies employment with NASA, Roskosmos or ESA. Was Alan Shepard NOT an astronaut because he only did a suborbital flight? What about the astronauts that never flew? I think everyone realizes these are colloquial terms to designate the nationality of “our nation’s people that go to space.” The conferring source of that term will matter just like any other title, the accrediting group will matter. A law degree from Harvard means something different than one from Uncle Joe’s Discount Law Institute. Your mileage may vary.
In terms of international recognition “astronaut” is synonymous with the term “cosmonaut” or “taikonaut”. There is an issue about whether a space flight participant is considered an “astronaut” for purposes of international legal obligations under the Outer Space Treaty and it children. There is an international legal standard for what constitutes an astronaut, and the consensus is that space flight participants and crew of commercial vehicles don’t meet the standard. This becomes even more troublesome when commercial crew for the ISS comes online, because the “astronauts” are considered “space flight participants under the Commercial Space Act (Title 51, Chapter 509). The FAA is trying get an amendment to make a category for government passengers, but that’s another issue. So, the term “astronaut” is more than semantics; Virgin’s customer’s shouldn’t have the expectation that they’re going to get astronaut wings pinned on them after their flight.
It really is quite interesting that the media haven’t really picked up on this before. Guess that since it’s a very small slice of the populace, it’s not really all that newsworthy.
Cheers.
Branson does not have one dollar of his own money in this deal.
You tell me what that means.