Rats!

Sometimes I dislike being right ... see: Branson's Booby. The Virgin Galactic "spaceship" has crashed during a test flight in California killing the pilot and seriously injuring the copilot ... see: CNN Money Story.

Afterward: For someone thinking along the same lines as myself (albeit with a little less empathy for Branson) read: Time Magazine Story.

Branson’s Booby

Surprise, surprise! The Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space flight has been delayed again … see: Bloomberg Article. Richard Branson, President of Virgin Enterprises, has just announced that the first passenger-carrying flight of his Buck Rogers adventure will be delayed again … until next spring. This is the umpteenth cancellation of this event which was last scheduled for this past August … see: Space Shot. Tom Bower who is writing a book about this British entrepreneur opines (in the first article referenced above) that Branson’s booby (my term … that sea-bird which is notorious for having difficulty taking off) is “unlikely ever to attain its goal of carrying passengers into sub-orbital flight.”

So far this adventure has already collected more than $80 million in deposits (@ $250,000 a pop) from would-be passengers (many famous … see the above article.) Although I have been picking on Richard Branson ... in a way this would be a shame … for such a “failure to launch” would clearly sully what has been Branson’s otherwise larger-than-life life.

One, Maybe Two, Trick Ponies

Virgin Enterprise's Sir Richard Branson has had some business success ... but some of this infant terrible's  recent promises have  been hollow. He previously had pledged  to contribute $3 billion to cleaning up air pollution ... he has delivered on less than 1/10th of this amount ... see: The Guardian Story. He also has set multiple deadlines for his traveling to the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic "spaceship" ... the latest date being this past August. Suffice it to say he has still not fulfilled this pledge ...  nor is this likely to occur anytime soon ... see: Space Shot.

One has to admire this man's chutzpah ... but, on the other hand, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ... who has outgrown his bank account ... see: Business Insider Story, he sometimes seems to have much more money than brains. Success often does this to entrepreneurs ... give them one round of applause in the center ring ... and they think that they can run the circus.

Space Shot

The London Sunday Times has a downer story on Richard Branson’s pie-in-the-sky space endeavor, Virgin Galactic.  This effort, started in 2006, was to transport regular citizens into space.  So far this Virgin enterprise president has collected $80 million in deposits (@ $250,000 a pop) from aspiring neophyte astronauts for the trip of a lifetime … see: The Sunday Times Article and Branson has spent a few hundred million himself. 

The only trouble is that some of these depositor’s lifetimes may run out before this spacecraft actually rockets them into space (apparently for only a few short minutes).  The initial launch date set was 2007 and this has been continually revised back … the last ETD being Christmas, 2013 … which didn’t happen.  The next target is August, 2014 for which NBC has promised extensive coverage … see: Next Big Future Piece.

Apparently the rocket that was used in the first VSS Enterprise (now version 2) was underpowered for passengers and had only been able to achieve two sub-orbital test-flights… for extensive details on this evolving process and newer developments see: Dailytech Story. 

I am not usually as skeptical as I am for this type of endeavor, but I have, in the past, expressed doubts about Richard Branson’s vision and New Mexico’s excessive spending on a spaceport … see: Beam Me Up Scotty.  Now that such flights may possibly (someday) happen, it just seems to this blogger that a few minutes in suborbital space is hardly worth $250,000 and being exposed to the many risks involved … let alone Branson turning it all into a commercial success.