From Richard Branson to Jeff Bezos, area tourism takes flight

Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut; Pinguin Random House UK, p. 352; ₹799
(Courtesy: Penguin Random House)

As Schmidle emphasizes in the book, Branson, Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have “different visions” for their journeys into space. While Virgin Galactic hopes to carry passengers on a “suborbital flight”, Blue Origin is also interested in space exploration. The most ambitious is Musk, who hopes to one day colonize Mars.

With Mark Stucky, however, the author takes the reader on a deeply personal journey right from his early days as a boy born to fly. Inspired by pioneer aviator John Glenn and his space missions in 1962, a three-year-old Stucky told his father that one day he would become an astronaut. His first experiences with hang-gliding, skydiving with glasses stolen from a chemistry laboratory and a shady parachute, life in the Marine Corps, a pilot with the US space agency Nasa and flying the fastest spy jet in the world, during the war with the air force in Iraq – Schmidle puts you on the shoulder of a successful pilot and his passion for flying. This feeling is not alien to the author. His father Robert was an excellent fighter pilot.

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The triumphs and the journey of taking people into space are also littered with tragic moments. In 2014, Stucky saw one of his closest friends and co-pilots, Michael Alsbury, die in a crash on the Virgin SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise spacecraft. Schmidle aptly describes the small error tolerances and the risks associated with the work.

It was a simple technical mistake by Alsbury, an experienced test pilot, that resulted in the crash when aerodynamic forces tore the ship apart. The tragedy hit Stucky hard, but did not deter him. “With the job came the expectation of sudden death; Test pilots have learned to metabolize mortality differently than the rest of us, ”writes Schmidle.

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, piloted by CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay, will be launched from its mother ship VMS Eve on its first space flight after launch from Spaceport America, New Mexico, USA on Sept.
(Virgin Galactic / Handout via REUTERS)

There is of course the exhilaration of flying into space, experiencing weightlessness and safely returning to earth. In December 2018, Stucky and his co-pilot Frederick Sturckow, also a former NASA astronaut, brought the SpaceShipTwo more than 51 miles (about 82.7 km) over the earth, a marker used by the US to mark the beginning view of space. This was a major boost for Virgin Galactic – and the industry expects a lot more, for example in the form of commercial activity, by the end of the year.

For those who can afford it and those with the “right willingness to take risks”, nothing else comes close to space travel, says Schmidle. “In comparison, a Himalayan expedition almost looked like a pedestrian zone.”

This begs another question recently asked by the Associated Press: Who should be called an astronaut while private space travel is gaining traction? What do we call the people who are said to be willing to pay up to $ 55 million for a seat on a space rocket? Hobby astronauts or space tourists? Space watcher or rocket driver? Schmidle’s book leads you to some answers. But more importantly, it takes you on a well-reported journey of what inspires people to chase their dreams.

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