• Home
• /
• Entertainment

Space cowboy

Astronaut Brian Binnie talks about the heady experience of space travel and bringing it to the ‘masses’

ON THE 100TH anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight, Brian Binnie piloted the first powered test flight of SpaceShipOne as a Virgin Galactic test pilot – becoming only the second person ever to earn his astronaut wings on a non-government spacecraft. On a mission to extend the reach of space travel to the masses, he sits with City Times to discuss how the universe is about to get much, much smaller.

How do you compare driving in a Ferrari to riding in a space ship?

There’s a lot of power under the hood on a car like that. When you are two inches off the ground versus 200,000 ft in the air, it’s a different feeling. In a spaceship we’re much more bullet-like and it lasts for a while, but driving a car like this requires a different skill set. I think people attracted to racing would also find great interest in my space sport.

Only a handful of people in this have travelled into space, how does it feel to be one of the lucky few?

Well we are hoping to change that. Since the first days of space back in 1961 there have been less than 500 people who have experienced weightlessness and seen the view. We are hoping that with the Virgin programme we will increase that five-fold. We can change the course of history here by taking space the way that aviation evolved and grew up.

Can you explain the Virgin Galactic programme that gives anyone a chance to pay for a ticket to space?

I think once we have the routine down it won’t be that complicated. The first group of people we take up, we’re going to get very intimate with them, give them lots of training, lots of medical tests, flights in acrobatic airplanes etc. After three days of testing we will make our best judgment as to whether an individual is fit for the journey, then it’s off we go.

How much are you estimating it will cost for a trip to space?

Currently it’s $200,000, but we have hope that the price will be reduced to the price of a modest car. Your time in space will last about five minutes, but there is currently no avenue to get up there unless you have millions of dollars, and we are trying to change that. In the course of two hours you’ll feel the excitement of riding a rocket, the view, the acceleration, and the re-entry. These are all priceless memories. On Virgin’s website, more than 100,000 people have already expressed an interest and willingness, and we already have $40 million in deposits.

Why do you think there is such an interest in space exploration?

Well I think that for all people and cultures, it’s easy to look up at the sky and see the stars, sort of let the imagination run wild and it’s an opportunity to sort of expand one’s sense of awareness. It’s a chance to get a taste of the bigger picture. There’s a lot of appeal on many different levels, whether it’s spiritual, religious, or just a gratification for a new experience. My short time up there was a great sense of wonder and peace.

Why do you think that we haven’t put a man on the moon since the late 1970s?

Well there was perhaps no clear goal, so we need to get less government involvement in space and turn it over to people who view it as an enterprise that can flourish. We haven’t even begun to tap what can possibly happen by putting a man on the moon unless you’re going to build infrastructure there where you can do mining or exploration, and we never did that. There was no clear return on your investment for the cost of making it happen. I think there were seven different explorations that went to the moon, and that’s generally the problem with government-sponsored activities. It’s not until you turn it over to the private sector and commercialise it that people sort of view the whole task differently by wanting to make a profit. If the government ran the airline industry the way they have run the space-line industry, there would be one airplane flying and only the privileged few would ever get on it. You wouldn’t see the proliferation that we see today in aviation.

When you were a boy, did you ever imagine you would get this chance?

I played them out in my mind all the time, but whether I believed they would happen or not, I had my doubts. All the way I had setbacks and discouraging times, but I always tried to put myself in a position that if a door opened I would be ready to go through it.

kadry@khaleejtimes.com