Watching Richard Branson fly to the edge of space today was great to see. The reality is that it took nearly 17 years from Spaceship One's team winning the Ansari XPrize & demoing the technology to this flight. Burt Rutan and Paul Allen deserve a ton of credit for this... 1/X
I was told the Spaceship One program cost well over 10X the award amount. Rutan's design was so good it is used today largely in scaled fashion. But repeating Spaceship One's feat in a commercial manner would take many $ millions more and even lives. Branson stuck with it...
, although there were changes, but when it came to doing what he does best, being the ultimate promo guy, he put his own ass in the ship. I think that is highly commendable even though many blow it off as just billionaires trying to show each other up...
That may be true to some degree, but that does not mitigate the risk. And above all else, he played the part of the space tourist and will use all his notes to improve the experience for paying customers. He knows how to master customer experience and branding above all else.
In an interview after the historic flight, he mentioned he had dozens of notes on this—how to make the flight better for customers. Once again, top guy in the world on this, so his ride is not some fucking vanity project. It will improve the viability and quality...
of the experience when it needs it most—during its first impression phase. This is a luxury business. It isn't paying to go on a Russian spaceflight mission. It needs to be amazing end-to-end to get the volume of riders up and the cost down. The industry hangs on this.
So, while the flight was great to see, I am very interested on how the experience will be packaged going forward and how the business case gets stabilized. In the end, people can criticize the billionaire space race all they want. But at least he isn't some CEO sitting...
In his office surrounded only by kiss asses in the executive suite reading reports on what the little people below him are doing for his companies day in and day out. He is out there, experiencing the product, promoting it, in this case, doing so at risk of life and limb.
I think that is commendable.
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