Virgin Galactic Space Opera

This was the day 2 keynote speech at ad:tech, had very little to do with ad tech as such but it was quite interesting. Stephen Attenborough, CEO of Virgin Galactic gave a talk about them. For those who don't know, Virgin Galactic is using the advanced composite spaceplanes designed by Burt Rutan (see picture) to build a space tourism /satellite launch service (they say the endgame is an out of atmosphere based transport service). The argument is that these new materials offer an order (or two, or three even depending on what estimates you believe) of magnitude cost reduction over today's space technology



As well as cut-price Space Opera, the Green gods are called upon - this is all a Good Thing since (i) the carbon footprint (and cost) is much lower than rocket based satellite launch, and (ii) because if the planes fly outside the atmosphere there is less pollution. The point was made that the first space race was lost as it was hard to justify money to go into space rather than more mundane things...but if it's Green, well...

Stephen also noted that IT is now the largest user of energy on the planet and in fact future expansion of the 'Net will be limited by energy, not bandwidth or processing power.

There is only a tenuous connection between ad tech and space opera, but I found it quite fascinating - my first degree many years ago had a large Aeronautical engineering component, and it was in the early days of the use of composite materials in aircraft design. My second degree was largely about LAN/WAN networks (of which the DARPA net was one of many competing approaches) and small computers (they were called microcomputers, not PC's in those days). Two embryo technologies starting off at the same time

The thing that hit me was this - when I look at the speed at which PC based internet engineering moved from those days, compared to aerospace. Burt Rutan has been a fairly lone voice in the use of composites, its only recently that the new Boeing has used them, showing - after 20 years - initial mainstream use.

Its interesting to think about why one industry has embraced its new technology, while another sat on it for 20 years. Its clearly not money - Rutan and co have kept shoestring skunkworks going over the years. When I asked Stephen why, he thought it was due to low fuel costs keeping aluminium based technology viable.

I don't know...if the economics of composite are so extraordinary as claimed now, it should also have been attractive years ago. I suspect its more to do with a combination of problems in driving innovation in more mature industries, plus the risks of failure - you certainly can't innovate with "perpetual betas" models with things that can fall out the sky and kill people.....still, it gives pause for thought.

(I was part of the generation who believed in space travel, as Stephen notes - it was the children of the 80's and 90's who had those dreams strangled, so it's good to see it back on the agenda. I recall seeing the snail-like pace of aerospace development as an undergrad back then and deciding to put my future in IT and networking)

2 thumbs up to the organisers for this sort of talk - a fascinating story, told well always has a place. And 2 thumbs up to Virgin for doing this - it's great copy I'm sure, but its also the sort of innovation pressure that Aerospace clearly needs. Whether its sustainable for Virgin when the big boys start to take Composites and inner space travel seriously remains to be seen of course.

(btw, 2 thumbs down to the arrogant TV crew that hustled Stephen away while people were trying to talk to him after his session and insisted on interviewing him in the short break between talks, rather than afterwards, thus ensuring no conversations could happen. Old media thinking at its best....)