Space dust

Exactly fifteen months ago, Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson was in boisterous mood as he prepared for a press conference at Dubai's Emirates Towers hotel. Flanked by his long-time colleague Will Whitehorn, the duo were about to unveil the first ever UAE resident to go into space, Namira Salim.

But even before the conference began, Branson's Virgin Galactic company, formed to take tourists into space for US$200,000 a go, was on a roll. A South African man had literally wondered into the hotel waving a cheque for US$200,000, begging to be on board one of the first flights.

"We have sold so many seats, and we are still two years away from the first flight. It doesn't get much better than that," Branson told Arabian Business at the time.

And it probably won't. His entire commercial space tourism dream is in tatters, following a tragic explosion on a rocket test pad at the Mojave Air and Space Port in the California desert where Virgin's equipment was being tested. Three workers died, several others suffered serious injuries, and nobody can guarantee whether Virgin Galactic will ever make it into space.

So far, Branson has invested US$600m into the venture and taken a staggering US$200m in advance ticket sales. The marketing of the project has been sensational even by Virgin standards, and until the accident, it appeared that nothing could go wrong.

Branson had teamed up for Virgin Galactic with the legendary space pioneer Burt Rutan, head of Scaled Composites. Three years ago Rutan developed the craft SpaceShipOne which made it into space. His reward was a US$10m prize and a contract to build Branson a fleet of spacecraft. He followed up with SpaceShipTwo which will carry up to six paying tourists into space - sending them 62 miles above the earth and experiencing weightlessness for five minutes.

Test flights were due to start next year and commercial flights - with Branson and his family on board the first flight - in 2009.

So will that ever happen now? In an official statement, Virgin Galactic passed on its condolences to the families of those killed, but said it would not comment on the future of its space programme until a full investigation was complete. Privately, Virgin Galactic fears the dream may turn to dust. "We are by no means saying this is now all over - far from it. When you embark on such a project you have to face up to the possibility of there being major setbacks and risks, and even tragedies, along the way," says one senior Virgin Galactic executive.

But the same executive also admits that the company's fate is no longer in its own hands. The company's investigation into the incident could take nearly two months, but before then, a separate inquiry by NASA may decide to revoke Virgin Galactic's licence to develop rockets at the base. Given the growing speculation that some parts of SpaceShipTwo were based on the same design as the doomed Challenger Space Shuttle, that remains a strong possibility.

"We are not going to call time on this, at least not until we have thoroughly investigated what happened. But if NASA steps in then obviously that kind of decision is out of our hands," says the executive.

Virgin Galactic is not the only company attempting to make commercial space tourism a viable business - American billionaire George French; Canadian tycoon Geoff Sheerin and US businessman Chirinjeev Kathuria have also joined Branson in the same dream, and all three are watching events closely.

In the Middle East, Branson has been battling with Space Adventures to capture a slice of the lucrative market. Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic paraded Sharaf Group founder Ibrahim Sharaf as the first UAE national to have signed up for a space trip. Sharaf's own company Sharaf Travel was given the exclusive rights to market the venture in the Middle East.