Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut
Nicholas Schmidle takes a closer look at the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic’s campaign to build a space tourism company.
In October 2014, a 38-year-old test pilot was killed when his private spaceship crashed in the California desert. Prompted by this tragic event, Nicholas Schmidle spent the next four years embedded with Virgin Galactic, the company that owned the craft. In this lecture, Schmidle discussed his reporting on the program, and his forthcoming book about the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic’s campaign to build a space tourism company – an epic story about bravery and sacrifice, the thin line between lunacy and genius, the new space race, and most of all about pursuing a dream in an otherwise cynical world.
This event was moderated by Christoph Seidler, Science Editor, Der Spiegel.
Watch the Video
Related content
Fascism’s Lingering: Regime Change and Moral Reckoning
What Theodor Adorno and his Institute for Social Research team learned about the lasting impact of Nazi ideologies on the German psyche in 1950-51.
Moveable Type and the Early Modern Imaginary
Image reproduction and the Early Modern mental universe
The USA and Europe: Between Alliance and Shared Responsibility
Panel discussion with John R. Bolton, Norbert Röttgen, Ethan Kapstein, and Majid Sattar.