May 9, 2014 — Yesterday, Richard Branson discussed his plans to develop a plane that can fly from NYC to Tokyo in one hour. Okay, he didn’t spell out when he is going to do this, but he wants to make it a reality in his lifetime. At 63, he still has at least another 50 years to go. So sometime between now and 2060?
I like Sir Branson and respect his incredible accomplishments in business. I think he is a great writer (“Losing My Virginity”) and enjoy reading his ideas on management and leadership.
But what I like most is his ability to dream big dreams and market them as business plans without too much consideration for reality. He is the king of marketing and hype, and his latest fantasy – er, vision – is awesome.
A quick bit of history. Space Ship One won the Ansari X-Prize for sub-orbital tourism in 2004. The next year, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic announced plans to commercialize sub-orbital tourism. The first commercial flights were predicted by 2010. That date has been pushed back several times, and now is expected sometime in 2015. In aerospace, being five years behind isn’t all that unusual.
The delay in launching Space Ship Two is not for the lack of a dream (or the resources). It is just that it is very, very, very difficult to build a reusable sub-orbital vehicle that will carry several passengers to the edge of space and bring them back safely. And then do that again within a few days.
Flying from NYC to Tokyo in an hour is a dream that a lot of engineers and companies have had since the 1950s. For Virgin Galactic and competitor XCOR, sub-orbital tourism is a stepping stone to that goal. Spike Aerospace is approaching it by building the Spike S-512 Quiet Supersonic Jet first.
We all know that the holy grail is vehicles that can reach anywhere in the world in an hour and a half. The challenge is that the technology just isn’t there yet. First, we need to develop much cheaper propulsion systems to get us to orbit. Once there, we need heat shields and control systems to get us back to Earth safely.
Technical challenges should never stop us from considering future opportunities. But this dream is well ahead of schedule. One step at a time.