Branson: Behind the Mask Read online

  Ever since Branson had bought into the space business in 2004, he had used the rocket to promote the Virgin brand. ‘My gut feeling’, he explained, ‘was that we would get millions and millions of dollars of [free] publicity around the world by being the first people to take tourists into space.’ For three years, Branson had been touting $200,000 tickets to the super-rich eager to experience four minutes of weightlessness and a glimpse of the globe before tilting back towards Earth. Virgin’s ride into space had glorified the corporation’s image. The explosion could endanger the brand, the foundation of Branson’s fortunes.

  The tycoon depended on his publicists to contradict the cynics. Through a well-tuned network of sympathisers employed by the media, his loyalists smothered those questioning the use of nitrous oxide and defused any doubts about the rocket’s safety. The summary of perfunctory media reports delivered the following morning to Necker confirmed their success. No doubts were cast on Virgin’s ability to eventually succeed in its ambition to send tourists into space. There was an unfortunate contrast between the pristine sand on his Caribbean island and the desert scrub in Mojave after the explosion, but trust in Branson meant that even the bereaved families uttered no criticism of their employer.

  After the explosion, at 5 p.m. Randy Chase arrived at the site to investigate the cause of the incident. Born in 1953 and raised on a small farm, Chase was employed by California’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). His task was to decide whether the deaths were caused by accident or possibly criminal negligence. If Chase suspected any misconduct, two reputations – Burt Rutan’s and Richard Branson’s – might suffer and Virgin Galactic’s fate would be jeopardised.

  Barred from entering the site by the local sheriff’s tape, Chase viewed the devastation in the fading light. Live images had been transmitted from the remote cameras guided by agents employed by Hazmat, the agency responsible for detecting chemical hazards. ‘God knows what happened,’ he said. He had studied industrial safety at a local college, and thereafter had investigated accidents in mines, factories and oil wells. He knew nothing about ‘cold-flow’ tests of nitrous oxide through valves. ‘No one’s to touch anything on the scene until I get back,’ he ordered. He would drive through the night back to his home and collect his clothes, ready for what he anticipated would be a long inquiry into ‘a high-profile accident’.

  In the morning, Chase returned to Mojave. His orders, he discovered, had been disobeyed, and the control truck had been moved from the site. ‘We needed to protect the computer hard drive,’ he was told. Chase unquestioningly accepted the explanation, unaware that the engineers’ visible shock masked fears about the rocket’s safety.

  For the first time, Chase inspected the area. The isolation was eerie. The hot sun intensified the silence across the scrub. ‘There are no blood stains in front of the fence,’ he noted. ‘All the deaths happened behind the fence.’

  None of the engineers corrected Chase’s inexplicable error. Chase knew that the explosion had been recorded on video by Scaled and also on eyewitnesses’ mobile telephones. But he was unaware of one particular clip showing Glenn May darting in front of the fence with two other engineers just before the explosion. He saw only two videos showing the three men walking towards a gap in the fence but no further. He would be emphatic that any eyewitness who saw the three in front of the fence ‘is wrong’.

  The approach of the engineers had been to volunteer their co-operation and play on his ignorance. Drinking coffee in the Voyager, the cosy diner underneath Mojave airport’s control tower next to the runway, Chase became relaxed among his new friends. The diner’s walls were covered with photographs of Burt Rutan celebrating his triumph in 2004 as the winner of the Ansari X Prize, a competition aimed at encouraging commercial flights into space. The ruddy-faced designer with mutton-chop sideburns had sent one man into space in a cheap rocket, boasting afterwards that ‘this rocket is safer than conventional rockets’. While Chase could not be immune to the pioneer’s distress over the tragedy, he was at the same time impressed by Rutan’s self-confidence. The eccentric designer, living in a half-buried pyramid sticking out of the sand near the airfield, commanded respect among the small community.

  Earning profits from space is a big risk. Fortune-hunters would do better drilling for oil, because those gambling on space need to be more stubborn, more creative and more charismatic than other ego-tripping adventurers, if only to attract investors. Ever since the end of the Apollo missions to the moon and the shuttle disasters, space had lost its shine. NASA, the American space agency, generated disillusion and was criticised for being bloated and dishonest. Washington had slashed the agency’s funding, especially the budget of the orbiting International Space Station. Each trip to the station by the space shuttle, with seven astronauts aboard, cost about $1 billion. To save money, NASA had paid the Russian government to deliver payloads and astronauts. Now, in a bid to reduce costs permanently, American entrepreneurs were being encouraged to develop cheap rockets to place satellites in orbit for experiments in a gravity-free environment and to deliver payloads and people to the space station. Their profits depended on building a reusable rocket or capsule so that space travel would resemble journeys by conventional aircraft. By adapting proven technology, rockets in the future would repeatedly take off, fly and land back on a runway.

  Richard Branson had been following Rutan’s progress ever since he had registered Virgin Galactic as a proprietary name in July 2002 – ‘several years before I met Rutan’, he would say. The idea had been sown by someone mentioning that 90,000 people had signed up to Pan Am’s First Moon Flights Club during the 1960s. The members included Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater. For the world’s master of publicity, the potential of Virgin Galactic became incalculable.

  The idea had been born in 1998. Chatting in a bar in Marrakech with Steve Fossett, his competitor in a round-the-world balloon race, Branson had heard about Rutan’s project to launch rockets from an old B-52 bomber. Two years later, Will Whitehorn, Virgin’s media-relations supremo, visited Rutan’s factory in Mojave and saw SpaceShipOne under construction. The cost – about $26 million – had been financed by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. The two men hoped to land the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which would be won by the first team to launch a manned spacecraft twice in two weeks using the same engine and sending it into space 100 kilometres from the Earth before returning.

  Whitehorn monitored Rutan’s progress. Two tests had been dangerous but successful, and by summer 2004 Whitehorn was sure that Rutan would win the prize. On 21 June, SpaceShipOne had completed an unpublicised piloted flight into space, landing back at Mojave airport. Rutan’s first publicised launch was due to take place on 29 September. The cost to buy into his venture, Branson was assured, was low, and considering that in 1986 Rutan had designed the first propeller plane to fly non-stop around the globe, the chances that Branson might be picking a winner were high. The clincher was the name. Virgin Galactic would give him the ultimate marketing image to reinvigorate his brand globally.

  On the day, WhiteKnight, a specially built twin-fuselage plane, moved slowly towards the runway. Attached under the fuselage was SpaceShipOne, the manned rocket. Strapped inside was Mike Melvill, the pilot. Just before take-off, a casket was placed alongside Melvill in the cockpit. Inside were the cremated remains of Rutan’s mother, who had died four years earlier. WhiteKnight took off and over the next hour climbed to 50,000 feet. Then, SpaceShipOne was dropped into the atmosphere and within seconds was soaring like a corkscrew at three times the speed of sound towards space. Spectators monitoring the flight at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert gasped as Melvill rolled twenty-nine times before crossing the winning tape sixty-two miles above Earth. After three minutes of weightlessness, he began the glide back to California. All the steering and other functions were performed manually without computers and, because of the low speed, there was no need for any heat-deflecting re-entry technolog
y. Rutan had achieved a remarkable success. The second flight was due within ten days. Branson made the telephone call.

  Branson’s audacity in business is to bid low in order to try to tilt the deal in his favour from the outset: firstly, because he wants a bargain; and secondly, because he has considerably less money than wealth-watchers assume. His sales patter is consistent: ‘We’re risking Virgin’s invaluable name, and you’re getting all the upside.’ In 2004, he balanced Rutan and Allen’s money and skills against his commitment of the Virgin brand. However, Branson added that if SpaceShipOne returned safely, he would make a serious financial investment to accelerate Rutan’s ambitions. In exchange for adding the Virgin Galactic brand name to SpaceShipOne, he offered $1 million to Scaled Composites, Rutan’s company. Both Rutan and Allen embraced Branson as a valued partner.

  With the deal agreed, on 4 October Branson was standing in front of dozens of cameras in the Mojave desert to watch the launch of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne. He had arrived amid media reports that the intention was for the spacecraft to carry the first tourists into space in 2007. Branson’s declaration to the cameras generated euphoria among enthusiasts. Until then, the only journey for tourists to the International Space Station 250 miles above the Earth cost over $20 million aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. ‘We’ll be the first in space,’ Branson told the crowd.

  Standing next to him was Burt Rutan, a remarkable aerospace designer recognised internationally for his achievements. As an adventurer he had much in common with Branson. Dressed in a leather jacket, the sixty-year-old saw himself as a modern version of the Wright brothers. Politically, he and Branson were not soulmates. Rutan was a fierce conservative who derided global warming, opposed liberal causes and loathed political correctness. He did, however, share with Branson a contempt for bureaucratic paper-pushers, who in the context of this operation were the US government’s regulators. Success, he hoped, would silence the naysayers. ‘We proved it can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees,’ he pronounced proudly to over fifty journalists. Branson applauded that sentiment and stared like a thrilled schoolboy as WhiteKnight roared down the desert runway and took off, with SpaceShipOne glistening underneath.

  As before, SpaceShipOne was dropped from the aircraft at 50,000 feet and, after firing its rocket, soared seconds later past the winning post 69.7 miles above Earth. After two minutes in space, the craft tilted and glided back towards the Mojave. Rutan and Virgin Galactic had won the prize. Media attention was Branson’s oxygen, but on this occasion his publicists did not need to contrive any excitement. A genuine frenzy swept through the crowds. They loved Branson’s promise of space tourism for everyone within three years. Although Virgin’s ‘space travel’ was a trip that lasted less than five minutes outside the Earth’s atmosphere – ‘a high-altitude bungee jump’, the critics carped – the joyful crowd embraced the company’s spectacular achievement. Their cheers were interrupted by a call from the president. Squeezing into an office with Rutan and Paul Allen, Branson listened to George W. Bush’s congratulations over a telephone loudspeaker.

  The success of that day in 2004 more than satisfied Branson’s requirements. For some years, he had been trying to shift the focus of Virgin’s expansion from Britain to America. So far, a commercial breakthrough there had eluded him. Triumph depended on boosting his own and Virgin’s image. To be effective, he needed to occupy his favourite place – the spotlight. Staging stunts for free publicity had been Branson’s prime weapon over the previous thirty years, and had produced profitable results in Britain. By contrast, his flamboyant feats in America had barely registered with the media and the public. In the past, he had entered New York’s Times Square on top of a tank to promote Virgin Cola, and had dangled from a crane apparently in the nude with a cell phone strategically placed to boost the marketing theme that Virgin Mobile’s charges were transparent with ‘nothing to hide’. On that occasion, the small crowd had failed to notice that Branson was wearing a skin-coloured bodysuit. His gimmicks had produced a scattering of photographs in obscure newspapers. Smudged images were no substitute for a sustained advertising campaign, but the finances of the billionaire had deteriorated after the 9/11 attacks. Unable to afford a multimillion-dollar advertising budget, Virgin Atlantic struggled. Virgin Galactic, Branson hoped, would change everything.

  Virgin’s publicists instinctively presented Virgin Galactic as the underdog and a poke in the eye for NASA. Their script was quickly abandoned. NASA, Branson realised, would be the source of future contracts. This was no time to be making new enemies, especially as his $1 million investment had produced an unexpected bonus. Within days of the launch, SpaceShipOne received an official blessing. The prestigious Smithsonian Museum in Washington had agreed to exhibit the rocket in its permanent collection of milestones in aviation history. Daily, thousands of visitors would gaze at the craft’s gleaming shell with the iconic logo – ‘Virgin Galactic’ – emblazoned on the tail fin. The catalogue entry was priceless: ‘Private enterprise crossed the threshold into human spaceflight, previously the domain of government programs.’ For just $1 million, Virgin was set to become firmly established in America. Virgin Galactic would be developed by The Spaceship Company, jointly owned by Virgin and Rutan’s Scaled Composites. Under contract to The Spaceship Company, Scaled would develop the motor and obtain the safety licence from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allowing them to carry tourists into space. Reassuringly, Northrop Grumman, the aerospace giant, would soon after buy a 40 per cent stake in Scaled.

  Four days after the Mojave triumph, Branson embellished his success. Seven thousand people, he said during a newspaper interview, had already registered to make a paid flight in 2007. ‘A tremendous take-up,’ said Branson, mentioning that Virgin Galactic would carry at least 50,000 people over ten years. Those who paid the full fare immediately, he added, would be at the front of the queue of the 500 passengers who would fly in the first year. ‘We are extremely pleased because it just means that the gamble we took seems to have paid off.’ His commitment to spend $110 million, he continued, would earn $100 million from passengers in the first year.

  Rutan was unfazed by his partner’s certainty. The designer uttered optimistic assurances about the problem-free process of scaling up the spaceship and its engine. There were no doubts about converting his crude two-man rocket into a sleek craft capable of carrying two pilots and six passengers up into space in a non-orbital flight, meaning that after a few minutes they would be heading straight back to Earth. Branson might have asked questions, but he was driven by marketing rather than engineering. His comprehension of the problems was best assessed by the appointment of Will Whitehorn, Virgin’s media specialist, as the rocket supremo. Whitehorn’s lack of engineering qualifications was concealed by his thrill at having found a Virgin winner – an aspiration held by all Branson’s outriders.

  Branson’s own enthusiasm was shared by Stu Witt, the chief executive of Mojave airport. Surrounded on one wall of his office by the memorabilia of twenty years’ service as a US Navy fighter pilot and at the opposite end by elk skins collected from afternoon hunting trips in north California’s mountains, the former Top Gun welcomed Branson for bringing glamour and money to the shabby desert outpost. ‘He’s a neat guy,’ Witt told everyone in the Voyager diner. Branson had reignited the executive’s ambition to transform Mojave into the Silicon Valley of the space business.

  Witt’s military charm flattered the billionaire. Joining Rutan’s exploratory venture, he told Branson, could be compared to the pioneering voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. ‘State-sponsored exploration is over,’ Witt told Branson. ‘It’s back to low-cost private enterprise.’ Witt’s enticing imagery predicted that millionaires would commute by helicopter from Beverly Hills to Mojave and, one hour after leaving their mansions, would be blasting off into space for a day trip to the Middle East or Australia. ‘You’re a pioneer,’ W
itt had told his visitor. ‘Planes are the safest travel ever. Now make space the same.’

  Witt may not have warned Branson sufficiently that Rutan’s plan to scale SpaceShipOne up to SpaceShipTwo was risky. ‘It’s like going in one step from a Kitty Hawk to a DC3,’ Witt would later say. At the time, no one told Branson that Rutan knew how to expand his spaceship but seemed to know little about the technology involved in developing a bigger reusable rocket motor. By his own admission, Branson struggled to understand a corporate balance sheet, so engineering technology was a challenge. Usually, he relied on others to worry about the detail. Delegation was his management style, but in reality his lack of expertise allowed no alternative. Outsiders had the impression that his unique ability was to perceive advantages invisible to others. In the past, that instinct had rewarded him with great wealth, but on this occasion he appears to have failed to understand the fundamental principle of designing a rocket: the motor must be perfected before building the spaceship. By nature, Branson prided himself on breaking conventions and doing the opposite. ‘The rich think they’ll be successful with everything they touch,’ Witt would tell friends. ‘Their planning is essential, but their plans are worthless. Pushing at the frontiers is their forte, but they’re working in a hostile atmosphere.’

  Branson was uneducated about science. In search of a PR coup, he wanted to believe Rutan’s assurances that expanding SpaceShipOne would be achievable. Since Scaled was an accomplished aircraft company, he assumed that building a bigger rocket motor would be no different than swapping the engine in a Boeing 747. Branson did not appreciate the consequence of his innocence as he embarked on his final attempt to become a major player in America.