These are the voyages of....
I'm sure the staff at who are being laid off by another of the bearded wonder's companies, Virgin Atlantic, will be especially pleased to hear this. Was there any comment from him on his private Caribbean Island?
Virgin Orbit is set to fling a first payload to orbit with its Boeing 747-mounted LauncherOne. The first launch opportunity will come on Sunday 24 May, with another the following day. The window for dropping LauncherOne is substantial: from 17:00 to 21:00 GMT. It has been a while coming. By the company's own estimates it has …
'We note in the company's press kit that its founder, beard aficionado Sir Richard Branson, is described as an "adventure" – which is also an apt term for a journey on one of his trains. '
Beardie doesn't operate trains any more - we've decided the Italians should have a go at running the West Coast; presumably someone in the DoT heard the aphorism about Mussolini getting the trains to run on time and thought that was good enough.
He's still leaching off the taxpayer though - right now trying to get Cornwall County Council to stop funding fripperies such as schools and public transport so money can be siphoned into his spaceport in Newquay.
But it does need a 10000ft runway for the 747, a trained crew to fly it, and someone to serve them fish ...
The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner.
Considering this is basically a American company, probably staffed almost entirely by Americans, this all sounds very typically self-effacingly British. Hey, we built this thing, it might work, it might not, but we'll give a jolly good try and if it doesn't work, well hey ho, we'll have another go. We've even got a spare rocket in the hanger just in case. (Although that last, spending real money on a plan B is a bit more American than the more typically British shoe-string, garden shed budget.)
Still, I wish them luck. The more the merrier.