Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides on LauncherOne and the Return of SpaceShipTwo

Episode Date: March 10, 2015

6,000 job-seekers came to the new Long Beach, California home of Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne rocket on a recent morning. We sit down with CEO George Whitesides for a conversation about this new effort and the return of SpaceShipTwo.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Virgin Galactic in my backyard, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier, and this week to my hometown of Long Beach, California. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, standing by to take you to the grand opening of the facility where Virgin Galactic will build its Launcher 1 rocket. Bill Nye has a salute for the men and women who wanted to make the one-way trip to the red planet with Mars One. And Bruce Betts will guide us through the night sky. Beginning this busy show with a busy segment of her own is Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, kind of a potpourri today based on your March 6 blog entry that gave us many updates on a whole bunch of missions. Let's get started with what's going on out at Ceres. Well, what's going on out at Ceres

is that we have a spacecraft in orbit there. For the first time, a spacecraft is orbiting a dwarf planet. It's the first time that a single spacecraft has orbited two different worlds beyond Earth, talking about Dawn, of course, and it's just so exciting to have Dawn finally there and getting ready to start its mapping mission. I found a pretty interesting random fact about this orbit. It's actually still going to be spiraling down to its initial science orbit at about 13,500 kilometers above the surface of Ceres, which just happens to be about exactly the same distance

at which New Horizons will be flying past Pluto in July. That's fascinating. Okay, since we're going to cover a lot here, what's next? Well, let's go on out to Mars, where Curiosity has had somewhat of a rough week. The rover did finish drilling activities at Telegraph Peak in record time, but then lost all that extra time to a problem with a small mechanism in the arm. There's no serious danger to the rover, but they're being extra cautious just to make sure they know how to work around it, prevent it from happening again as they continue on. And after they've solved that problem, which they think they might have today, they'll be hitting the road, leaving Pahrump Hills, where they've been for many months. So

it's a big moment on the mission. Also at Mars, the Mars Express spacecraft has recently announced a competition to allow schoolchildren to pick targets for the visual monitoring camera, which is always very exciting. So people should check that out. But the contest deadline is March 27. So you got to do it soon. All right, let's go out to that comet that Rosetta is orbiting. Yes. And there's a thrilling for me piece of news from that mission, which is that they've begun to release the formal archival quality data from their nav cam instrument. Now, before you get too excited, they've only released the data up to July, which is before the comet was more than a dot to nav cam. But they've promised to start doing data releases every month and will catch up to only six

months old data before too long. So that's really thrilling. Got to watch that website to see the fantastic data come down the pipeline. We still have a couple of moments left here. How about Japan's progress with this new Hayabusa 2 mission? Yes, Hayabusa 2 has finished its commissioning phase. They've tested out all the engines, the ion engines that'll propel it very gently toward its asteroid target. They all work great. All the instruments work great. So they formally transitioned into the cruise phase of the mission,

where they'll be using those ion engines to set themselves up for an Earth flyby late this year that will send them onward to their target asteroid. And finally, I saw a landing ellipse for InSight, the next Mars lander. That's right. They've picked one of the four landing sites that had been under consideration, which is somewhat exciting. But of course, InSight is a geophysical mission that's studying the inside of Mars not the outside of Mars and they deliberately set out to target the boringest spot they could possibly find for a mission. It is flat, it is featureless it is 100% safe. It's very good news for the mission

but it's a little hard to get too excited about it. Well Emily, my head is spinning but if people want to do this at a more leisurely pace, they can take a look at your March 6th blog entry and much more on the blog at planetary.org. Thanks so much. Thank you, Matt. She's our senior editor. Planetary evangelist Emily Lakdawalla is also a contributing editor for Sky and Telescope magazine. Up next, also looking to the skies, is Bill Nye. Bill, welcome back. We were just talking off the air about the latest news from, or at least about, Mars One. Doesn't

sound particularly good, does it? No. Apparently their contractors have not received follow-on contracts, and they lost their television deal, which was a big part of it. And Matt, I don't think this is such a bad thing in the big picture. Mars One people were going to go to Mars to never come home and we were going to watch their activities on television around the world. And their activities, just to be honest, or Frank or Grimm or Arms Akimbo, their activities probably involved them dying on Mars within a few months of getting there. It's cool. It raised awareness.

Nobody got hurt. It's all good. It is interesting, though, that people have these tremendous ambitions about exploring Mars. But when push comes to financial shove, it's just a lot harder than it looks. Yeah. You know who I do kind of feel sorry for? And this is new because I've been reading interviews with him. There is that one woman whose name I can't remember who I'm really impressed by, who is one of the finalists or semifinalists, whatever stage they were at.

Here is a woman who seems to have a head on her shoulders and her heart in the right place. She was never going to go to Mars, I told people. But it does say something. What makes you say that she would never going to go to Mars, I told people. But it does say something. What makes you say that she would never go to Mars? Well, I'm not saying. Never say never, right? I don't think she's going with Mars 1. I'll put it that way.

Well, it's looking more difficult now than ever. But meanwhile, the Indian Space Research Organization's mom, Mars orbiting mission, has gathered data about methane. It's inconclusive, but it really is amazing. If we are to detect a source of methane on Mars, it might mean that there are some microbes living there. So Mars continues to fascinate us. And Matt, what I'm so proud of at the Planetary Society is what I claim is we're the real deal. The people who advise us, the people on our board of directors, our members, are focused on what is really possible in space. And discovery of life on another world would change this one. It certainly would.

Well, thank you, Bill. Oh, no. No, no. It is I who must thank you. Let's change the world. And condolences to all those good folks who wanted to make that one-way trip to Mars. Folks, you're better off. Trust us.

We are going to talk in a moment with somebody who has somewhat more modest plans, but plans that he's hoping to make good on very soon with Virgin Galactic. Branching out, we'll be talking with George Whitesides, that company's CEO. You probably know that Virgin Galactic aspires to be the world's first commercial space line. But not only are we planning to open access to space for people, but we're also going to send small satellites to space and do it cheaply, more quickly and more routinely through the LauncherOne small satellite launcher. We're thrilled to be part of the small satellite revolution, and we're thrilled that you want to help make LauncherOne a reality.

Your presence here is a testament to Long Beach's vital role in aerospace history. We're excited to play our part in Long Beach history with up to 100 high-tech jobs in the near term and more over the coming months and years to come. That was Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides on March 7th, preparing to cut the ribbon in front of the building where his team will build Launcher One, a rocket that will be air-launched from the same White Knight II aircraft that will carry the company's spaceship, too. You'll hear my exclusive sit-down conversation with George on that morning in a few minutes.

About 6,000 men and women showed up with resumes in hand for the job fair that began the hiring of 100 new staff. John Graham was in that line. I recognized him from past events. John, I don't know if there are any other Planetary Radio listeners here, but it's nice to run into at least one that I know. Well, Matt, I always loved the program, and I always loved the Planetary Society, and I'm very happy to see you here. Well, thank you for the plug. But what are you doing here? You're in an awfully long line. Yeah, I guess there are about 1,800 people or so, huh? And I'm looking for a job

like everybody else. I think Virgin Galactic would be an incredible place to work. Back in the mid-80s, I actually was hired by NASA to promote the commercial uses of space. Challenger happened, things like that, that got changed a little bit. But it's great to see it finally happening. All right, I wish you the best of luck. Look, the line is moving. I better let you get back in there. But thanks for this and best of luck. Thank you, Matt. John Graham, one of 6,000 job seekers at Virgin Galactic's Job Fair. When we return, a conversation with CEO George Whitesides. This is Planetary Radio.

Greetings, Planetary Radio. in May. Follow every aspect of the mission at sail.planetary.org. Let's change the world! Random Space Fact! Nothing new about that for you Planetary Radio fans, right? Wrong! Random Space Fact is now a video series too. And it's brilliant, isn't it Matt? I hate to say it folks, but it really is. And hilarious. See, isn't it, Matt? I hate to say it, folks, but it really is

and hilarious. See, Matt would never lie to you, would he? I really wouldn't. A new random space fact video is released each Friday at youtube.com slash planetary society. You can subscribe to join our growing community and you'll never miss a fact. Can I go back to my radio now? Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. On Saturday, March 7th, I joined 6,000 job seekers, a congressman, the mayor of Long Beach, California, and others at Virgin Galactic's brand new LauncherOne facility. The master of ceremonies that morning was Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides. Once the ribbon had been cut and the building opened, George and I sat down in a quiet

conference room to talk about this new effort, as well as the status of Spaceship Two, the craft the company hopes will make it the first space line on Earth. George, welcome to my hometown. Thanks so much. Nice to be here. I literally live five minutes due east of here, and now you're going to be building rockets in my backyard. We're excited, excited about that, Matt. What is the niche for LauncherOne? What kinds of things are you going to do with this relatively small rocket? We want to launch small satellites, and we want to focus in on the small satellite market. That's what LauncherOne will be specifically built to do. We think that there's going to be a continuing growth in that part of the market. We think that'll be an exciting and

strong business for this product. So what, from CubeSats, which we know a little bit about, the Planetary Society, on up to like what size? So on up to maybe sort of the size of a mid-size refrigerator. So we can put, you know put approximately 500 pounds into a LEO orbit. So this is not these huge bus-sized satellites that some people launch, but this will be smaller ones. And the point is that they will be getting a dedicated ride to space at a low cost on their own schedule. So in other words, not piggybacking on, let's say, one of those they're building up in Hawthorne up the road here. Yeah, I mean, that is probably appropriate for certain applications, but particularly if you care exactly what orbit you're going into or care about a specific schedule that you don't want to be tied to

another customer, a dedicated launch at a reasonable price, I think, will be an attractive proposition. What will that reasonable price be? I mean, can you say at this point? We've said that it will be under $10 million. We're still talking with folks about the right pricing model, and obviously we're talking with folks, some of whom want to launch a whole lot of satellites. So there will be different pricing models. But under $10 million, I think, will be certainly the lowest cost American launch vehicle.

Talk about, if you can, some of those clients that you are speaking to who want to put a whole, what, constellation of these little guys up there in orbit. I mean, what kinds of things will be done? I think broadly speaking, you know, there's a whole range of different applications. So communications is obviously one of them. Remote sensing is another. Some people are looking at certain weather applications. A company called OneWeb that wants to do a global constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit

that will allow the under-connected in the world and the unconnected in the world to connect to the Internet and other communication networks. That's really exciting, and it's enabled by the revolution that's going on in small satellites, the ability for these smaller satellites to do what larger satellites could do, you know, 10 years ago. You also have, maybe it's not a revolutionary form of a launch technique. I mean, there's some precedent for this. But you're able to take advantage of this existing resource, though, the White Knight II. Aerolaunch in general offers certain advantages. You get out of the range constraints and the costs of the range. Certain weather issues, you can get around that as well. There's also the commonality with our other business, which is good.

And that other business, which we need to talk about a little bit. Bear with me. There are some things that I want to be able to say about this, and there are so many people who've talked about it. I think, for me, the tragic loss of Spaceship Two, I actually, thanks to your people, I touched that beautiful ship. I stuck my head up inside it. I'm not even sure I can imagine how much it must have affected those of you who helped to create it and who knew the people who flew it. I'm not even sure I can imagine how much it must have affected those of you who helped to create it and who knew the people who flew it. Before you respond to that, I want to slightly

paraphrase what my boss, the science guy, said. We did a show right after the loss, and he said, it's heartbreaking, yet it's part of the nature of spaceflight and especially human spaceflight. Stay tuned. We as humankind are going to press forward and so will Virgin Galactic. They will redouble their efforts. We're trying to learn how to get in and out of Earth's atmosphere to make discoveries that will change the course of human history. We're explorers. We will press forward. My impression is that from what I've read and seen since then is that Bill got it just about right.

Yeah, as he usually does. I mean, it was a really hard day that we had in October. You know, we spent a couple months taking care of folks and we'll continue to do that forever. You know, I think our folks on the team are, as Bill said, you know, rededicating themselves to getting the next spaceship up, you know, which we hope to do this year, at least finish the assembly of the next spaceship and get it into the beginning parts of test flight. You know, to be honest, it was a terrible thing. We didn't want it to happen, but it was always a possibility. And I think the next vehicle will be safer for that event, and, you know, we're moving forward. What is the status of the second spaceship, too?

Well, we're, I would say, probably around 90% complete on the structure and now doing a lot of work on the systems. So, you know, you can build a vehicle and it'll look pretty good, but you still have a lot of work to do in terms of the wiring or the, you know, valves and controls and various other things. So we've definitely got several months more of work. But we had begun work on the second spaceship about three years ago. And so we are, I think, closer to getting back into test flight than people might otherwise expect. So without giving a specific amount of time, our hope is to get back at it as quickly as we reasonably can. than people might otherwise expect. So, you know, without giving a specific amount of time, you know, our hope is to get back at it, you know, as quickly as we reasonably can.

You still have hundreds of people out there who are standing by the company waiting for that opportunity to come on board, including your boss, Richard Branson. Yeah, we have nearly 700 customers, so we lost 3% or something after the accident. I thought that was fairly remarkable that that many of our folks stuck with the company, and I think they did it because they're convinced that we're going to try to do it right. So, you know, a testament to them and their steadfastness, as I think they know that they are opening up the space frontier as much as the guys on the shop floor are in their own way. Everybody's playing their own role.

Yeah, I was really touched by the support that we got from many of the customers. Would you talk a little bit about something that I only discovered fairly recently, although I guess it's been around for a few years, this little subsidiary that you've helped to start called Galactic Unite. Yeah, Galactic Unite is sort of our philanthropic or charitable efforts. It takes its name from something called Virgin Unite, which is the foundation, essentially, or the charitable arm of Richard Branson and Virgin Group's efforts.

And that's an area that Richard spends a whole lot of his time on now. I mean, he really is dedicated to this wide range of philanthropic efforts from the environment to peace to reform of certain legislation and all kinds of things. So Virgin Unite, we thought an appropriate name for our efforts was Galactic Unite. And we're really focused on STEM education, science and technology and engineering education, just connections with that general subject. So some of our customers are involved in STEM efforts. Our customers and others have funded various scholarships for folks in both the United States and New Mexico, as well as other places around the world, Africa.

We are also connected in with the Google Science Fair, which is another great effort. And so there's actually a whole wide range of stuff that we're doing under that general banner. You've even got lesson plans available to schools for K through 12. You've even got lesson plans available to schools for K-12. Yep, we've got lesson plans if people want to figure out how suborbital or orbital spaceflight can connect in with their student stuff. They've done some really amazing stuff. And obviously we hope as time goes on and as we start flying people into space and small satellites into space that we can even do more stuff. That's a really exciting area, obviously one that I'm really passionate about as well.

I'm going to guess that like a lot of the other people, virtually all of them who've already gone into space, that a lot of these people are also going to want to be part of an effort like Galactic Unite and share what, well, you know, we've talked about in the past, the overview effect. Yeah, I think they will. You know, I think they'll want to share their experiences because I think that they will be inspiring experiences. And hopefully that will have an impact in all of the local communities around the world that these people are from, you know, because they're from over 50 countries, you know. And that's remarkable, right? You know, we have, you know, hundreds of people from all over the world who will be going to space. And I think that that will have a profound impact over time.

Back to today before we wrap up. Moments ago, you were outside cutting the ribbon with the congressman and the mayor of Long Beach and some other officials and lined up behind you. Well, one of your people told me that you had 1,800 RSVPs. I wouldn't be surprised if there were that many more who just walked up today hoping for one of these roughly 100 positions right now. That seems like quite a vote of confidence. Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably several things. One is that it's a really exciting

project and business that people can really get their hands involved in building a space vehicle. That's fundamentally exciting and cool. Also, of course, having the Virgin brand on the business, I think, is exciting. While I think the economy is getting better, I think people are always looking for exciting new opportunities, and we welcome that. So we'll see how we do, but it seems like a great day. George, once again, welcome to the neighborhood. Good to be here, Matt. Thanks a lot. Always a pleasure. George Whitesides, he's the CEO of Virgin Galactic and the Spaceship Company. He served as Chief of Staff at NASA, which awarded him its Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award the agency

confers. He also headed the National Space Society, and once upon a time he helped found Yuri's Night, the annual celebration of human spaceflight. George just led me into this cavernous space that will fairly soon be building rockets, but at the moment has line after line of applicants for the hundred or so positions that are expected to open up here at Virgin Galactic's Launcher One facility. And each of these lines is in front of a discipline, propulsion, quality and safety, avionics and software, systems analysis, and about four or five more that go on through this gigantic hall. It is truly an amazing turnout.

Bruce Betts is once again on the Skype line. It's time, therefore, for What's Up? A look at the night sky, our trivia contest, and other fun things to do with the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society. Welcome back. Hey, good to be back. I'm glad, thank you.

Beautiful days here in Southern California. How do those nights look? Oh, they look lovely. Can't miss the planets. They got Venus low in the west, but super bright and Jupiter fairly high in the east, looking super bright both early in the evening. You can still check out Mars looking about 100 times dimmer than Venus down below it a ways. Mars is going to get harder and harder to see over the coming weeks. Saturn coming up in the middle of the night. And for those of you who live in Greenland and parts of Siberia,

there's a total solar eclipse coming March 20th. But for the much larger population centers throughout Europe, you'll be able to see a partial total eclipse on March 20th. So check that out and let the rest of us know how it was. Nothing for us in North America. No, but just a couple weeks later, we will have another total lunar eclipse visible from the Americas and around the Pacific on April 4th.

All right, thank you, solar system, for throwing us a bone. What else you got? We got this week in space history, Soyuz TM 21 launched 20 years ago this week, 1995. And Norm Thaggard became the first American to launch on a Soyuz and the first to board the Soviet, sorry, Russian mirror space station.

Right. And I think there's some more people coming back from the ISS this week, an American and a couple of Russian cosmonauts. Yeah, lots of Soyuz use since then. All right, we move on to random space facts. Darn, should have gotten George Whitesides to do it this week. Not that there's anything wrong with your rendition. Whitesides to do it this week. Not that there's anything wrong with your rendition. We should just have a little mashup of you lamenting all the people who didn't get to do Phantom Space Fact.

It is pretty much a habit, isn't it? So Ceres, which Don successfully went into orbit around this last week, Ceres is much wider at 975 kilometers than it is tall, so to speak, north-south direction at 909 kilometers. The relatively large difference is probably due to its rapid rotation rate, spinning the equatorial material out, which is common for bodies, but particularly for solid bodies, not common to have that big a difference. Yeah, that's pretty extreme. I mean, we've got a little bit of this on Earth, right? Yes, as the Earth got older, it got a bit of an equatorial bulge. Don't we all?

Exactly, and some of us like Ceres more than others. Okay. Well, we got some fun responses to the contest this week. Get us started. We asked about how close to the moon's surface did the Apollo 10 lunar module Snoopy get to? Pretty good response this week. It dropped down some, but still fun. And like I said, lots of great responses.

Quality over quantity this time. I believe that our winner is Samir Marrafe of Arlington, Massachusetts. He came back with this, 15.6 kilometers, and then he also had that in nautical miles. We got some other measures from other people, as you'll hear in a moment. He said 8.4 nautical miles. Close enough? That is indeed. Then, Samir, congratulations. You've won yourself a planetary radio t-shirt. I'm going to lay some others on you here because these are pretty entertaining. We got this from Ed Lupin, Edward Lupin in San Diego, California. He pointed out that the descent stage of the lunar module crashed on the moon. So technically, the answer could also be zero feet or meters.

All right. Well, I would have considered meters. Hmm. Hmm. All right. Well, I would have considered that if random.org had chosen him. You would have. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's fair of you. All right. Now here's yet another answer. Snoopy's ascent stage is still up there in a heliocentric orbit. Most of them were brought back and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. Especially Apollo 13, because that was the lifeboat, right? Got him home. Exactly.

Here's one I think you'll enjoy from Nudim Abu Hashmi. He is in Reseda, California. He said, assuming the average peanut is two centimeters tall, the lunar module was about 720,000 peanuts away from the lunar surface. I like this one even better from Martin Harjowski. He said, estimating a one-and-a-half-meter doghouse, Snoopy got to within 10,400 doghouses of the surface. And you, being an aeronautical fan, you might like this one the best.

That 15.6 kilometers, that's about nine kilometers higher than the surface ceiling of Snoopy's Sopwith Camel. Oh, nice. I thought you'd like that. Sopwith Camel wouldn't fly very well on the moon, but maybe Snoopy's would. Funny you should mention that, because Nathan Hunter had the same thought. He said there's no atmosphere, so obviously that

ceiling would be much lower. Well, thank you, everybody. We obviously don't any week ever get to everybody's fun responses, but we got through more than usual this time. And how about for next time? What is the approximate rotation rate of Ceres? I imagine that it was rather fast. The Cere-in-ion-day rotation rate of Ceres. What is it?

Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Or would that be the serial rotation rate? Don't spell them out. Let's see. This time you have until the 17th of March. That would be March 17 at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us your answer. And we will once again award a Planetary Radio T-shirt. And how about another iTelescope account?

One of those 200-point or $200 American dollar, U.S. dollar accounts for looking at stuff up in the sky from that worldwide network of nonprofit telescopes from iTelescope.net. There you go. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about your favorite type of berry. Thank you, and good night. My favorite? Frankenberries, since we're talking cereal here. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society,

who has once again joined us for What's Up. Sonja Van Meter is the Mars One would-be Martian who has earned Bill Nye's respect. We've got a link on the show page at planetary.org slash radio. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its high-flying members. Our theme was created by Josh Doyle. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.