That Moment When You Become An Astronaut
Pretty sure this will be my favorite picture from today's flight. Beth Moses, our Chief Astronaut Instructor, looking at Earth from space for the first time. I see joy, wonder and amazement. Can't wait to share this experience with our wonderful customers. Congratulations Beth! pic.twitter.com/KIf15X24ue
— George Whitesides (@gtwhitesides) February 22, 2019
SpaceShipTwo Returns To Space With Crew Of Three
“This space flight means Chief Pilot Dave Mackay and co-pilot Michael “Sooch” Masucci become commercial astronauts and the 569th and 570th humans in space. Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s Chief Astronaut Instructor, flew as the third crew member in a first, live evaluation of cabin dynamics. She is the 571st person to fly to space and the first woman to fly on board a commercial spaceship.”
Yawn, it only went up to 55miles.
Call me when you get to orbit and I’ll be impressed.
It’s not designed to go into orbit – from Day One. You know that, right?! It took them more than 14 years to get to this point – if you wanted orbital; another few years and billions more. You gonna pay for that? (rolleyes emoji)
Exactly. It’s not a spaceship, but a high altitude joy ride for the 1%, and a failed one at that. 13yrs and not a single dollar earned. Add to that the cost that the tax payers in NM have sunk into this boon doggle for the Spaceport and you have a giant white elephant.
I’m all for real Commercial Space like SpaceX, NanoRacks, etc. Those companies actually do real work in Earth orbit and beyond. This is just a stunt.
My prediction is that either VG will fold after Richard Branson passes on. His kids will take one look at the balance sheets and close it down or they will start flying passengers, but once they have an accident, which results in the death of a billionaire or two, the ensuing court battle will shut it down regardless of what agreement they signed beforehand.
Space exploration and commercialization belongs to the bold, not the tourist.
You make valid points – some I’ve even thought myself over the years – but don’t forget that air travel especially international air travel used to be only for the ‘1% percenters’ as well. But even in this age of ‘budget’ international airfares there are still plenty of people who can’t afford to fly. It’s all about context.
I really don’t get this ‘it’s just tourism’ chest beating. They don’t have to be doing ‘real work’, as you say, to be doing something of value. Some fraction of passengers from these suborbital hoppers will want and be able to pay for an orbital/lunar/Martian experience. That drives development of the transportation and accommodation infrastructure. If airplanes had been kept for ‘real work’ only, how many planes/airports/hotels/etc. do you think there would be?
Also, every pair of eyes that sees the Earth from above, no matter how briefly, receives the benefit of perspective. Expanding the number of (wealthy, influential) people who have an expanded perspective on Earth and humanity can only be good for all of us.
I wish both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin well with their business models. I hope they’re able to start flying customers soon.
All true.
Still, there’s a level of disingenuousness when equating achieving orbit and these rocket planes.
Why? Because gaining 250 miles in elevation and >19,000 MPH, riding a device with a terrifying energy density is just different. We are talking orders of magnitude here.
The two devices represent a pinnacle of some sort, it’s true. But can those in the cabin be described with the same word, thus implying some sort of equality?
No. It’s not even close.
A lot of people, some even with solid educations, don’t understand the VAST difference between popping up into space and going into orbit. This has the best explanation that I have found:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
And yet, X-15 pilots who went above 50 miles received astronaut’s wings. Going up without attaining orbit or escape velocity should and does mean something. They’re not the same, but they don’t need to be.
This is a valid point, Todd, and I’m not sure how to address it completely.
Start here:the difference between orbit and and VG is largely qualitative. Would you agree with that? Orbit>>VG; that’s an equation written from observation, partly, and partly by assessing the relative energy packed into the two machines.
There is also something I’m calling the “newness” factor, having thought of nothing better. VG is pushing a sort of generalized, but very well understood flight envelope. Adding propulsive rockets is hardly new; use of the “flutter” wings, though, is an important addition to the body of knowledge, at least as far as I know.
X15 was dropped from a B52; even in 1959-1968 (wikipedia), this dangerous but not particularly special.
But “William J. Knight flew Mach 6.70 at 102,100 feet, a speed of 4,520 miles per hour” feels qualitatively different (wikipedia; annoying SI removed).
And I think I’ll stop here.
Actually it has been over 14 years since SpaceshipOne won the Ansari X-Prize, so this an important step on what has been a long road.
I think the reaction that we see in Beth Moses is just the beginning. I have long felt that word of mouth is going to sell a whole lot of tickets on suborbital tourist flights. Once people experience it I think they will tell virtually anyone who will listen how indescribable it is and encouraging people to do it, and that it is worth every penny (assuming that you have that many pennies). The naysayers who keep saying that this is no big deal will eventually be drowned out by the whoops and hollers that we will soon start hearing on videos that people post after their flights.
The naysayers also say that this is insignificant as it is just a rehash of what was done sixty years ago. But this is different, it’s ordinary people doing this. Just like in the very early days we had photos taken from space, but it wasn’t until astronauts started flying in space and telling us about their experience that we began to get a sense that there is something really, really special about it. Despite the fact that these were normally laconic test pilots who had already had plenty of excitement in their lives over the years.
With rare exception (if there are exceptions) every astronaut’s view of the world that we live on is forever changed by their experience. The great thing is that soon we will have many more people getting at least some of that same changed perspective. That’s why I hope the number of people who sign up for the suborbital flights exceeds expectations, and leads to more companies providing flights, at hopefully lower cost. And of course eventually providing orbital flights.
And eventually beyond. Astronauts who went to the Moon didn’t seem to be as impressed at being at the Moon as they were of the view looking back at Earth. From beyond Earth orbit the perspective change of our place in the universe seems to be even more dramatic.
“Once people experience it I think they will tell virtually anyone who will listen how indescribable it is and encouraging people to do it,”
The first boatload of celebs with a combined 200 million on twitter will take their fight viral overnight…
No supplemental O2, no helmet which implies no ejection seat. Oh VG, you up to your old tricks again?
Interestingly, the press release refers to the pilots, Mackay and Masucci, as “commercial astronauts” while Moses (either a passenger or a payload specialist, depending on how you look at it) is simply, “the 571st person to fly to space and the first woman to fly on board a commercial spaceship.” By NASA usage, payload specialists (and even congressmen on a boondoggle) are also astronauts. I wonder why Virgin isn’t using the term for Ms. Moses. I’d think their future, paying passengers would want to call themselves “astronauts.”
I think the term astronaut will likely have a narrower definition as time goes on. In one definition being an astronaut is a profession, someone whose primary job is to fly in space for the purpose of doing space related tasks.
Supporting the concept of it being a profession, since the beginning of the space program it wasn’t actually flying in space that made someone an astronaut, they were considered astronauts even before they made their first space flight. And that includes those who were trained as astronauts but who left the program or who died before flying in space. Roger Chaffee for example is always referred to as an astronaut even though he never flew in space.
The Space Shuttle introduced the mission specialist astronaut, still an employee of NASA, their primary job was flying in space and being assigned to specific missions as needed.
Where the line began to blur is with the payload specialist astronauts. They were never actually employed as astronauts by NASA and usually received only a limited amount of spaceflight training. They were typically selected by the organization or corporation who the payload belonged to (usually scientific payloads). Although a small number of these flights were somewhat questionable such as the congress people who flew as you mentioned, and at least one case of someone being onboard to essentially watch their organization’s satellite get launched.
In the future, a drilling engineer at a worksite on the Moon will likely be thought of simply as an engineer who happens to be working at the moment on the Moon. Referring to that person as an astronaut might seem strange by then, sort of like us calling someone a sailor just because they currently work in the restaurant on a cruise ship. In fact the sailor example might be a good basis for a definition as it usually means a crew member of a ship who is involved in its operation or maintenance. After all the term astronaut means star-sailor.
What happens when point-to-point travel starts, will every businessperson who flies from New York to Hong Kong be considered an astronaut? Maybe now that tourist flights are getting ready to ramp up is a good time to revisit the definition of an astronaut.
There are Astronauts, and then there are astronauts.
how does anyone become a “Chief Astronaut Instructor” without going into space ? I’d’ve thought that going into space was a prerequisite for being an astronaut and being an astronaut was a prerequisite for being an Astronaut Instructor.
Not necessarily. When astronauts are selected by NASA, they are not qualified to go into space. The Air Force selects lots of people to become pilots before they’ve ever touched the controls of an airplane. That’s what training programs are for, and a ride on a SpaceShipTwo test flight may have been part of Ms. Moses’ on-the-job training. Given the company’s business plan, I suspect her job will be telling very rich people how not to bash their heads against a bulkhead, when they try to do backflips in free fall. That’s vehicle specific and also requires many skills dealing with the customers that many astronauts might lack.
yes, (re my comment about going to space be a prerequisite for being an astronaut) but before they’ve been in space (and earned their wings) they’re astronaut-trainee.
So I guess the position (Chief Astronaut Instructor) was filled with a training plan assumed … that they’d become an astronaut before they complete training anyone. Sure they’re “only” training space tourists, and I feel that demand for this will sky-rocket (no pun intended) once the service/experience starts.
I don’t recall Alan Shepard, John Glenn et al. being referred to as astronaut-trainee’s prior to their flights. But that is because there are two concepts of the word astronaut, one as a role, the other as an experience.
Qualifiers don’t seem to be used to differentiate the two meanings so for the most part it’s all about context. For example I doubt if a flown space tourist will start listing “astronaut” in the qualification summary section of their resume. However there are many people who have never flown in space who can put that on their resume, even though they left NASA before making their first spaceflight. Oh I’m sure that gets some reaction during interviews, “Wow, so what was it like in space?” But what are they supposed to put on their resume, astronaut-trainee? They were employed by NASA as an astronaut, that was their title. Now within NASA maybe there are designators in titles for flown astronauts, that I don’t know.
As for instructors, the Apollo and Shuttle astronauts had tons of instructors who never flew in space themselves, training the astronauts for all of their tasks including spacewalks and lunar EVA. I’m sure Beth Moses could do a fine job training tourists for their flight even without flying in space herself, although she would of course have had to rely on information received from people with experience, as is the case with a lot of training. However unlike the Apollo/Shuttle era where it wasn’t practical to send instructors into space for experience, it is feasible for VG to do so, and so they did.
I think I agree with all of that except, “I doubt if a flown space tourist will start listing “astronaut” in the qualification summary section of their resume. ” My gut feeling is that people can be counted on to pad their resumes and putting “astronaut” on it would be hard for some people to pass up. On the other hand, anyone who can afford a ticket is probably rich enough they don’t need or worry about a resume.
I could definitely see someone listing it under hobbies and personal interests. I suppose they could state it different ways, maybe spaceflight participant, flew in space, etc. I suppose by then people will have an idea what it means and I’m sure it would be a good talking point in an interview. Not sure they would get far however just listing astronaut though. Once the prospective employer finds out they just went on a tourist flight they would probably put the resume in the “astronut” file.