Octogenarian, mother-daughter team, headed to space

An octogenarian with Parkinson’s disease and a mother and daughter from Antigua will board Virgin Galactic’s first-ever tourist flight into suborbit on Aug. 10 at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, the company announced Monday morning.

Assuming all goes as planned, it will mark the official launch of Virgin Galactic’s long-awaited commercial service for paying passengers, kicking off monthly flights for adventurers.

The company did start commercial service for research-and-training missions in June, when it flew a three-member Italian crew into space to conduct experiments in microgravity. But the upcoming tourist flight will be the first time civilian space enthusiasts will board the six-passenger VSS Unity for a joyride into suborbit.

More than 800 people around the globe have made downpayments to reserve a seat on the six-passenger VSS Unity spaceship, including a reservation made years ago by Jon Goodwin, the 80-year-old with Parkinson’s who will join the Aug. 10 flight.

The other two passengers — Antigua citizens Keisha Schahaff and her daughter Anastatia Mayers — won seats on the Unity through a public drawing that Virgin Galactic conducted in 2021. They will be the first citizens from a Caribbean nation ever to fly to space, according to Virgin Galactic, which chose a diverse, multinational crew for its first “private passenger” flight to highlight how commercial space can open the cosmos to everyone.

To date, fewer than 700 people have traveled to space, with little diversity among that group — something the company wants to change, said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier.

“Each of these astronauts are role models and beacons of inspiration in their communities,” Colglazier said in a statement. “Watching Keisha, Ana and Jon embark on this transformative experience helps demonstrate that space is now opening to a broader and more diverse population across the globe.”

Monthly flights

The Aug. 10 spaceflight will mark the third time Virgin Galactic’s spaceship will fly into suborbit since May.

The back-to-back spaceflights mean Virgin Galactic is achieving the monthly flight cadence it’s been striving for since company founder Sir Richard Branson flew into suborbit in July 2021. After Branson’s flight, the company entered a nearly two-year hiatus for maintenance and enhancements on both Unity and VMS Eve — the mothership that carries Unity partway to space — to improve vehicle durability and reliability before initiating flights for paying passengers.

In May, both ships returned to service with an in-house crew that flew to space for a final, full-system review before launching commercial operations. That paved the way for the June 29 research-and-training flight with the Italian crew, marking the company’s first commercial flight since Branson created Virgin Galactic in 2004.

Following the June flight, dubbed “Galactic 1,” Flight Commander Mike Masucci said Virgin Galactic’s team of pilots, engineers, ground crews and support personnel are all racking up critical experience to not only sustain a monthly flight schedule, but to later speed mission frequency to eventually reach daily spaceflights.

“We know we can do one per month with the Unity, and, for now, we’ll stick with that,” Masucci told the Journal after piloting Galactic 1. “As we get smarter on how we turn the vehicles around between flights, we’ll improve on our efficiency and ability to deliver maximum results and turntimes.”

The company likely won’t move beyond monthly flights until 2026, after its next-generation Delta Class ships start entering service at the spaceport. The company is now building out its new rocket factory in Arizona, with assembly on the initial Deltas scheduled to begin next year.

Unlike the Unity, those ships are designed for weekly, rather than monthly, flights. And, as fleets of them come off the assembly line, ship rotation will enable daily flights, according to the company.

In the meantime, Unity and Eve are capable of managing monthly service going forward, said Mike Moses, president of spaceline missions and safety.

“We’re fully prepared now to operate monthly flights while we build the new ships,” Moses told the Journal during the Galactic 1 mission. “The great thing is, the Unity is a fully reusable ship, except for changing out the fuel and the motor itself between flights.”

The company has stockpiled about 30 motors at its engine factory in California, and it has a half-dozen more now stored on site at the spaceport.

“We don’t need a great big warehouse of them right now, but we’re pushing forward on production to build the stockpile we’ll need for daily flights,” Moses said. “For the next two or three years, we have what we need.”

Galactic 2

Meanwhile, the upcoming passenger flight, dubbed “Galactic 2,” will mark a few historical milestones, such as the first mother-daughter duo and the first Olympian athlete to go to space.

Goodwin, the octogenarian, participated in the 1972 Olympics in Germany. As a lifetime adventurer, he also won a six-day race in the Arctic Circle and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro before being diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2014.

“I was determined not to let it stand in the way of living life to the fullest,” Goodwin said in a statement. “And now for me to go to space with Parkinson’s is completely magical.”

Schahaff, a 46-year-old health and wellness coach, said that being from the Caribbean, she thought she’d never achieve her childhood dream of traveling to space.

“The fact that I am here, the first to travel to space from Antigua, shows that space really is becoming more accessible,” Schahaff said in a statement.

Schahaff’s 18-year-old daughter Anastatia — a philosophy and physics student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland — will become the second youngest person to go to space.

Under Virgin Galactic’s flight system, the mothership Eve carries the Unity to about 50,000 feet. At that point, the spaceship breaks away and fires up its motors to rocket into suborbit, allowing passengers in the cabin to float for a few minutes in microgravity and view the Earth’s curvature before returning to the spaceport.

Virgin Galactic Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses will join the passengers on the flight, which will last about 90 minutes from runway takeoff to return.

The spaceflight will be live-streamed. Viewers can watch at virgingalactic.com.