In Lieu of Spaceflight, Virgin Galactic Presents….
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Monday marked the second anniversary of Virgin Galactic’s most recent flight above 50 miles, the altitude the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) judges to be the boundary of space.
In the days leading up to the anniversary, I kept thinking Virgin Galactic will announce something on Monday. Some bit of news to distract people from 24 months without a spaceflight. Something to show forward progress ahead of what is likely to be yet another quarterly earnings call on Thursday soaked in red ink.
Well, sure enough, they released this on Monday:
From the video, I have no idea what a Disney imagineer does, or what this guy is going to be doing at Virgin Galactic. Fortunately, there was text accompanying the video that provided additional words:
With preparations underway for the first Future Astronauts to arrive at Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic has brought in Joe Rohde as a strategic advisor to help design and guide the overall experience journey for future astronauts, friends and family, and inspired fans alike.
Joe will become Virgin Galactic’s first Experience Architect, bringing more than 40 years’ experience from Walt Disney Imagineering where he led projects that transformed the image of Disney’s iconic experiences and attractions. Rohde is truly a transcendent creator whose design work leverages careful detailed composition to create authentic and remarkable experiences. The work he is starting will stimulate curiosity, guide the imagination, and anchor the Virgin Galactic customer experience with purposefulness and meaning.
Joe recently visited New Mexico for the first time, and he shared with us some of his initial thoughts as he starts out at the beginning of his journey to develop the experience that thousands of aspiring astronauts and enthusiasts will come to enjoy in the future.
As part of his interview, Joe said, “I spent 40 years with Walt Disney Imagineering and that word, ‘Imagineering,’ refers to the fusion of imagination and engineering. This means I’ve come from a tradition where if you are imagining something, you are imagining that thing is going to be made real. That’s also been going on here at Virgin Galactic, and I’m delighted to be joining at this incredible moment in time when it is about to blossom into public awareness.”
Rohde continued, “This is one of the most profound things that can happen to you. To go beyond the reaches of the earth, to space, and look back down at it. It’s a spectacularly unique opportunity with huge potential for transformational change in a person…What Virgin Galactic is doing, in democratizing space travel, has reached a moment where it is about to enter history. It’s happening right here in New Mexico, and it’s very rare to be a person who gets to be in the place, at the time, that history begins.’’
Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic said, “As soon as I joined Virgin Galactic, I knew there was one person we just had to work with to help shape the incredible experience we are developing – and that person was Joe Rohde. Joe has a methodology that is unique, inspired, and truly effective. His track record for keeping authenticity central to the design and creating deeply transformative experiences aligns perfectly with our mission. I couldn’t be more pleased to see Joe choose Virgin Galactic for his first encore!’’
Well, hopefully that cleared things up for all of you. If so, I would be most grateful if you could explain it to me in the comments section below. Because I’m still at a bit of a loss here.
As near as I can tell, the experience is going to be the actual spaceflight that Virgin Galactic has been promising people for the past 16.5 years but has yet to deliver on. Sixty years after the first spaceflight, most people don’t need a lot of help imagining it. Anyone who does can pull up videos on YouTube of Richard Branson promising how awesome it will be once flights begin in 12 or 16 or 18 months. (Branson’s estimates over the years varied, but the outcomes depressingly similar. Flights were supposed to have begun in 2007.)
Given that the last powered flight in December suffered an aborted engine ignition, and the one before in February 2019 that nearly destroyed the ship, it seems Virgin Galactic needs better engineering, not more imagineering.
Hopefully, Virgin’s management will address all of that in the earnings call. And Wall Street’s stock price obsessed analysts will ask some probing follow-up questions. Maybe. I will tune in and report back so you don’t have to.
16 responses to “In Lieu of Spaceflight, Virgin Galactic Presents….”
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It appears that VG has lost their way. Once upon a time VG had visions of reaching the outer edge of the stratosphere, and taking people on rides they would Cherish for their entire lives. Now it appears they are OK with sitting on the ground, hiring imagineers to develop a grounded ride experience on a big screen. Better hurry boys, SPACE-X is about to do what you started out to do before SPACE-X was even a company. Stop hiring over bloated executives and get a few engineers to help you launch.
VG is in quite the predicament. They went public because they ran out of funding but the product development is a complete blackbox so they have no choice but to try to create hype with all these extra frills. It will only go so far…
What I wonder is when will the financial media catch on? When does the penny drop? And will Sir Richard be in the black before that happens?
You know what would be a winner? Rip the run from out of the bottom of Blue Origin’s New Shepard program. Sell a flight called “The Allen Shepard Experience”. This is where you’re fed a full up meal with tons of liquids. You’re strapped in your chair, and then held there for hours with no chance of going to the bathroom. You then imagineer a space suit that allows the customers expelled urine to run all over their back. THEN, you conduct the flight. It’s such a great idea, I’m giving it away for free.
Heh. Might have some appeal to the BDSM and “water sports” communities.
But it should be The Alan Shepard Experience.
This is what space tourism is all about. Doug’s header reads Space Tourism and…
I have no idea why he would want to advertise the obscene spending displays of the uber-rich.
If he believes that somehow these faux astronauts are somehow helping to expand humankind into the solar system then I have to disagree. But not to be ungracious to my host, maybe he is right.
That tourists are again going to the ISS is disgusting to me. My tax dollars at work?
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Hey, what’s the point of being uber-rich if you can’t do a little obscene displaying once you are?
But in Doug’s defense, he’s not exactly “advertising” actual space tourism – which seems to be something that twists your panties pretty tightly – but is instead heaping one more in a long series of scornloads onto an entity that has been playing at space tourism for most of two decades without ever doing any.
Trumpist freak. Go away.
Maybe this is what they really mean by a ‘Virgin’ experience… untouched by the real-world 🙂
Seriously though, I think this enterprise should go back to doing what the the Virgin Group is best at: providing services by operating existing hardware, not developing technology. I know this would be a massive blow to Branson’s ego but the opportunity to tie-in his brand image with the likes of SpaceX, BO and Axiom (assuming they want to ‘play ball’) should more than outweigh this issue.
It is all about ‘transformational journeys.’ Have no idea what that means.
I think it means you’re transformed into someone who’s a quarter million bucks poorer.
Transformational is not an inapt word to use. I got to fly with Zero-G Corp back in 2004 when they were barnstorming around the U.S. Absolutely wonderful experience, although lunar gravity was my favorite.
Years later at a conference, Boeing took everyone out to see Ka by Cirque de Soleil, which featured acrobats undergoing short periods of free fall during the performance. My muscles quivered sympathetically; I desperately wanted to be up there experiencing the same microgravity. That’s all I remember from the show. Whenever I’m in an elevator I always do a jump when it starts descending to get that briefest instance of free fall.
TO THIS DAY, should I ever ponder the experience at any length my muscles will end up tingling from the muscle memory, oh so ready to dive back into the third dimension.
Was the experience transformational? I would have to say yes, and not just in the ways described. It did transform the contents of my stomach into the contents of a barf bag, but as I was quoted in the local paper – I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Watch for Mickey Mouse to be a passenger or pilot
https://s1.dmcdn.net/v/8tz7…
My uneducated guess is that in order to justify the exorbitant ticket price, Rohde will design a ‘curated experience’ so when the ‘astronaut candidates’ arrive for their training and then their flight, they get décor and atmosphere that convinces them that they are special, and having a unique adventure. ‘Tomorrowland’ so to speak.
Virgin Galactic is still a thing?
VG seems to have the unaccountable longevity of the senior-most female members of the British royal family.