‘I went to space with Virgin Galactic and fulfilled my dream as a Birmingham schoolboy’

“3-2-1, release, release, release.”

As VSS Unity drops, momentarily in free fall, Trevor Beattie has dreamt of this moment for six decades.

You’ve got to have a dream.

He casts his mind back to his time in class 2A at Moseley Art Secondary School in Birmingham all those years ago.

“Beattie!”

“Stop day dreaming and get back to work.” instructs Mr Palmer as he is caught staring out of the window at the sky… again.

At least that’s how I imagine the one-sided conversation went with the 11 year old Trevor, as it almost certainly did with most kids who wanted to be astronauts back then. It was the same in my school when I said I wanted to be a pilot, but you’ve got to have a dream.

“The only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do is go to Space. At school, I created a space project and called it The Space Race.” recalls Trevor, now 64. In that project he’d saved a spot at the end ready to glue in the news cutting of his own trip to space as “surely everyone would be up there in the near future?”

Its been a long road to finally get there. On his way he became the first person from his family to go into higher education, studying at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and went on to become a leading figure in the UKs advertisement industry masterminding pivotal campaigns such as the ‘FCUK’ for French Connection and ‘Hello Boys’ for Wonderbra. He was also instrumental in New Labours election winning ad campaigns of the early 2000s.

In 2006 he first started working with Virgin Galactic to change the perception that it was “just one big stunt” as he really believed in the project to create a commercial entity that could send anyone to space, even if its just for a few minutes of weightlessness. In fact he believed it so much he was one of the first to buy his ticket, paying around $200,000 for his flight. That looks quite astute now as the price is more than double that at $450,000 after years of delays and testing.

“This is not a recent obsession for me. I know that we will get there but you can’t rush it. When you have waited all your life, then it’s something that you can wait for a little bit longer.” This year, when the delays finally stopped and commercial service began, he knew he was getting closer and closer to his dream and has been counting down the flight’s ahead of him waiting for his turn.

“Armed.”

“FIRE!”

The call and response from the pilots in the cockpit snaps his attention back to the here and now and precipitates the moment that he’s travelled all the way to New Mexico for.

The rush and the noise come all together at once.

He’s pushed back in his seat, as the rocket motor ignites. The acceleration is visceral, rough and in-your-face. Its a primeval force that pushes him back in his seat as he now temporarily weighs 3-times more than he did just moments ago.

To give you an idea of what that means for your average male who weighs perhaps, 90kg, you would now be experiencing life as a 270kg person – or the same weight as my Honda motorcycle!

Yeah, 3G acceleration is difficult to explain in text, but work with me…

Despite the powerful acceleration, the quite literal Virgin astronauts are well prepared in advance having taken part in G awareness training earlier in the week. This involved flying with one of the mission pilots to experience elevated G forces (to simulate the launch experience) and reduced G force for the weightless part of the flight.

They also got to do a fast low pass of the spaceport Top Gun style!

After a wild 1 minute ride at over 3 times the speed of sound the motor shuts off and he’s released from his seat to enjoy the moment he’s waited for. The moment he is supposed to look out of the window at the sky with no teacher to tell him otherwise!

And what a sky.

Its dark, and the Earth shines like a marble and is so blue.

The realisation hits him – that he’s done it.

He’s in space.

He’s floating around the cabin with his fellow crewmates, ordinary citizens – casually including the first person from Pakistan in space – not highly trained astronauts from fighter pilot backgrounds, or scientists with PhD’s. Just normal people who had a dream to see the Earth as the rest of the universe sees it.

In 1923 Orville Wright, one half of the Wright brothers, wrote a cheque for $2.23. Having neatly folded that cheque into a paper plane its time to see if it will fly in space… “Orville was a visionary and a plane builder. I’d like to think he’d be delighted at having his legacy honoured in this way.”

You’ve got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream? How you gonna have a dream come true?

This is the culmination of a lifelong dream for a lad from Birmingham.

A lad who dreamed of space. He may have gone round the Wrekin to get to there but he’s written that final chapter in his Space Race at last.

And it’s one final chapter that this Brummie lad will never forget.