Consumer Behavior Project

Virgin Galactic is opening space to the rest of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09C795Rn3zk

• Throughout five decades of human spaceflight, the national space agencies in the United States, Russia, and China have inspired the world.

• But because government space agencies are not asked to help ordinary citizens to become astronauts, most of our planet’s seven billion people have had no opportunity to experience space and all of its possibilities for themselves, regardless of their passion or talents.

• Virgin Galactic is changing that. • Their purpose is to become the spaceline for

Earth; democratizing access to space for the benefit of life on Earth.

• Beginning with the first person in space — Yuri Gagarin in 1961 — human space exploration has been conYuri Gagar inducted by a handful of superpower government agencies.

Vision

• In 1996, a group of philanthropists and entrepreneurs began to change that by starting an international incentive prize competition, the Ansari XPRIZE. The competition attracted 26 teams from around the world, each attempting to become the first to build and fly a crewed spacecraft capable of carrying at least three astronauts into space twice within two weeks–a task of unparalleled proportions. These teams pursued nearly every imaginable configuration for space launch (such as ground launch, air launch, sea launch; with many different types of engines and fuels). Ultimately, a single team emerged as a clear leader: Mojave Aerospace Ventures, a team funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and led by legendary aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites.

To pursue the prize, Scaled Composites developed a two-vehicle system: a three-seat spaceplane called SpaceShipOne and a carrier aircraft called WhiteKnight. As required by the prize rules, the system was reusable and developed entirely through private funding.

Competition for Spacecraft

Dream of Two

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson

Burt Rutan

SpaceShipOne Millions of people all around the world were inspired by SpaceShipOne, including Virgin Group

founder Sir Richard Branson. Like so many others, Richard grew up watching the Moon missions, and dreamed of one day flying to space himself. As the years passed, it became increasingly obvious that his dream was unlikely to become a reality without some positive action. In the 1990s, undaunted by the scale of the task, Richard began the process of building the world’s first commercial spaceline, a company designed to help people around the world fulfill their dreams of flying in space. The biggest single obstacle was finding safe and commercially viable technology. Our small team spent years hunting for the right design before our team discovered SpaceShipOne, thanks to our work with Scaled on a project called the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.

We loved Scaled’s approach to human spaceflight. Before the Ansari XPRIZE was awarded, we agreed with Paul Allen and Burt Rutan that, should they win, Virgin would engage Scaled to develop a commercial version of the SpaceShipOne system, and build organizations to manufacture and operate the new vehicles for private passengers. As SpaceShipOne touched down on October 4, history was made, and the partnership between Virgin Galactic and Scaled began.

Dream of Two

On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne completed all of the prize requirements and officially won the $10M Ansari XPRIZE. In so doing, it became the first-ever private vehicle to carry a human being into space, making international headlines and stunning a world that had

largely written off commercial human spaceflight as pure science fiction.

SpaceShipOne

The Real Experience

SpaceShipTwo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlt16sSk2Rk

• At 10.51am PST 31 October 2014, the fourth rocket powered test flight of one of the company's SpaceShipTwo craft, VSS Enterprise, ended in disaster, as it broke apart in midair, with the debris falling into the Mojave desert in California, shortly after being released from the mothership. Initial reports attributed the loss to an as-yet unidentified "in-flight anomaly”The flight was the first test of SpaceShipTwo with new plastic-based fuel, replacing the original—a rubber-based solid fuel that had not met expectations.[

• 39-year-old test pilot Michael Alsbury was killed

• 43-year-old co-pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured.

• Initial investigations found that the engine and propellant tanks were intact, showing that there had not been a fuel explosion. Telemetry data and cockpit video showed that instead, the air braking system appeared to have deployed incorrectly and too early, for unknown reasons, and that the craft had violently broken apart in midair seconds later.

Tragedy

Thank You..