Speaker 1: Okay. I'm Eric Mack. It's three in the morning in the Las crus New Mexico. And this is what it takes to get to space, or at least to watch Virgin GOC, founder and billionaire Richard Branson get the space.
Speaker 2: [00:00:30] So here we are space port America, New Mexico, just before sunrise. And there's been a bit of a delay overnight. Some weather push things back by about an hour and a half, but we've still got, uh, several hundred. I'm hearing over 500 people here on hand to watch, sir, Richard Branson and five Virgin gala employees head to the edge of space. [00:01:00] So way off in the distance behind me is the white night two craft VMs, E that's the carrier aircraft and spaceship two unity will be underneath it when it [00:01:30] takes off, supposedly any minute here. So the goal is obviously that no one in nothing is harmed during today's mission, but I did just see a tarantula, very rudely swept off the tarmac. So you can be the judge
Speaker 3: And rolling.
Speaker 2: [00:02:00] So I came out here to the backside of [00:02:30] spaceport America to escape the blaring sound of the live stream. That's coming out of loud speakers everywhere. And this is where I found a bunch of Virgin GOC employees watching the actual flight. BMSE Carrie spaceship, unity, which you can't see it's up there at over 40,000 feet right now you can just kind of make it out as a spec in the sky, but it is up there, uh, preparing to detach the spaceship to unity from beneath it so [00:03:00] that it can ignite its rocket engine. And from there, it's up to space.
Speaker 4: [00:03:30] One of the, you know, people have told me about this, but, but it's kind of until you, you really experience it for yourself that it's so quiet when the walk motor shuts off, all of a sudden, it's just, it's very quiet in the cabin. You can, you can talk to each other and hear people in the cabin. So, uh, Beth, uh, Beth knows, um, who is the cabin lead and the test director from today? [00:04:00] Um, I heard her saying, don't, don't miss happen. You don't forget to look out the window. Don't forget to look out the window. And so, uh, yeah, I didn't even reminded. So, uh, um, just, just went up to floated up to the window above me and just took a look out and was,
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? And what does the significance of what happened today at space port of America? Well, so far a lot of the focus has been on Richard Branson and rightly so, uh, this is a journey for him. That's lasted, uh, almost 20 years. [00:04:30] Uh, it cost over a billion dollars and it is impressive without a doubt. Uh, but there's also been a lot of talk today about the desire to send a lot more people to space and to make space more open to everyone. And I just certainly hope that that, that isn't lost and that that's not just lip service that, uh, we're hearing today and never again, uh, you know, the, the first space race. Um, we ended up benefiting in [00:05:00] many ways that we didn even know what's going to happen at the time we have, uh, a global positioning system and a satellite based civilization today because of the technological gains, uh, that NASA began and helped inspire over a half a century ago. And so today, as it's over a hundred degrees here in the heat and we're facing an environmental crisis, I hope that some of the things that are learned from this new space race really will trickle [00:05:30] down, help us solve some very real problems that we have on earth today. And that was pretty cool too.
