Branson: Behind the Mask by Tom Bower Read Free Book Online

ride from Los Angeles to Mojave airport. But he consoled himself: ‘Branson hasn’t invested a dime in New Mexico, and people will want destinations. They’ll want to go somewhere, not return to the same point.’
    Branson had a spaceport and ticket-holding passengers. He now needed more money to develop the spaceship. Boosted by Burt Rutan’s encouraging reports, he flew in March 2006 to Dubai, a haven of cash-rich sheikhs. Amid the publicity for the start of Virgin Atlantic’s daily flights to the Gulf state, he hoped to persuade the Maktoums, the ruling family, to invest in Virgin Galactic. ‘A number of companies around the world are offering space travel,’ he said, ‘but they haven’t tested and built any spaceships. They certainly haven’t had any test flights into space. Virgin is the only company in the world that has achieved that.’ To embellish Virgin’s victory in space, Branson described his discussions with Robert Bigelow, an American aerospace entrepreneur, about developing inflatable pods so Virgin’s space tourists could stay in ‘a space hotel by the end of the decade’. During the visit to Dubai, he said that Virgin had registered ‘seventy-five fully paid bookings’. The sceptics were dismissed. ‘Personally,’ said Branson, ‘I think there’s a demand for space hotels.’
    One year later, in March 2007, the tempo increased. Selling tickets and rooms in space hotels needed agents, so forty-seven ‘space agents’ associated with the Virtuoso travel network were invited by Virgin to a two-day training course at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The session started with a slick film. ‘It blew me away,’ Mike Melvill, the pilot, told the viewers as he stepped out of SpaceShipOne. ‘It really did. You really do feel you can reach out and touch the face of God.’ Melvill was followed by George Whitesides, the executive director of the National Space Society. ‘Stephen Hawking plans to hop a flight on Virgin Galactic,’ he said. ‘Virgin Galactic is the private company with the only reusable manned spacecraft that has successfully flown to space and back.’ Virgin Galactic, the travel agents were told, would be taking off on schedule from the spaceport. The agents departed as enthusiasts. They were convinced there were many Americans eager to spend their pocket money on a unique thrill.
    In New Mexico, not everyone was convinced by Governor Richardson’s ‘pay to play’ spaceport or Branson’s promises. ‘This is your classic Old West story of your snake-oil salesman’, scoffed John Grubesic, a member of the New Mexico senate, ‘who comes to the dying town promising to revitalise it. Unfortunately people have bought it, hook, line and sinker.’ But no one had any reason to assume that Branson did not sincerely believe that Scaled could deliver the rocket as promised.
    Soon after, Grubesic resigned from politics in disgust. His isolated protest was ignored. Branson’s trumpeting of Virgin Galactic had forced America’s power brokers finally to recognise the tycoon’s importance.

3
The Club
    Al Gore, the former American vice-president, flew to London in his private jet in April 2006 to meet Richard Branson at his home in Holland Park, west London.
    Long before he entered politics, Gore had campaigned about climate change. An Inconvenient Truths his documentary film warning about the imminent catastrophe of global warming, was due to be released the following month. To mount a popular crusade, Gore needed support from influential businessmen, and was persuaded by environmentalists that Branson embodied the ‘can-do’ dream. His newfound celebrity in America had magnified his global fame.
    Until then, Branson had played at the periphery of the green movement. Invited in 2004 to sponsor the launch of the Climate Group at a celebration at the Banqueting House, in London’s Whitehall, attended by Tony Blair, bankers and industrialists, Branson had declined to