Is that a different experience to the other vehicles that you’ve test-flown earlier in your career? And if everything’s normal, which 99.9 times out of 100 it is, then you do have a few seconds to look out of the window. There’s no motion, no forces, no sound because we don’t have any fans or anything running at that time. We’re in the simulator every day, sometimes twice a day, working really hard to try and do the job as best you can.īut once you leave the atmosphere and you’ve put the vehicle in the attitude desired, there is this period of time where you’re sitting there with no forces on your body, the vehicle is sort of doing its own thing.
Yeah, a lot of the job is hard work, we’re trying to gather a lot of information in a short space of time, trying to be as efficient as possible because every test flight is expensive and takes weeks, months, sometimes years of planning and preparation. When you’re up there, do you get to appreciate the beauty of it or allow any emotion to seep in? Or is it your job not to do that? Richard Branson floating in zero gravity aboard the VSS Unity © Virgin Galactic As a test pilot, I assume you’re quite an analytical, technical person. I remember looking at that and thinking wow, is that what’s keeping us all alive here on planet Earth? There are lots of different layers and beautiful colours, but it’s also very thin – kind of worryingly thin. In between the two is this beautiful atmosphere, which is very delicate. There’s this incredible range of brightness, which I don’t believe a camera can ever capture. It sounds strange, but space is blacker than black, there’s a dense, matte black and in contrast, the Earth is vividly lit. The initial reaction when you’re out there is just: wow. It has an effect that kind of builds over days and weeks and months afterwards when you reflect on what you’ve done and what you’ve seen. Lots of people ask that question and my initial reaction afterwards was, ‘No, I’m the same Dave Mackay I always was’. There’s some kind of spiritual or environmental awakening. Astronauts often say that being up there changes them in some way. This beautiful, very thin band of the atmosphere around the planet. You can also look out sideways and see that dense blackness of space. The windows let you look up or down, so you can see down to Earth where you’ve come from, you can see the planet racing away from you. We believe the best view is in the inverted position. In the cabin you have windows at the side, and you also have another window up above you. SpaceShip Two, rocket burning © Virgin Galactic What’s the best view?
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