It was by happenstance that Marc and Sharon Hagle decided to fly to outer space.
The Winter Park couple, known locally for their philanthropy and support of the arts, were celebrating a wedding anniversary three years ago with a zero-gravity airplane flight out of Cape Canaveral. Among the other passengers floating about in the specially modified Boeing 727 was a group of sales people from Virgin Galactic, the commercial space-flight venture being developed by British billionaire Richard Branson.
It didn’t take much to sell the Hagles on the chance for some real space travel.
Tickets for a seat on Branson’s still-in-the-works spaceship, the VSS Enterprise, cost $200,000 each. But the Hagles have discovered the super-sized airfare, in addition to buying them the ultimate bucket-list adventure, has gained them admission to one of the world’s more exclusive and interesting clubs.
Branson, a consummate promoter, has been including his astronauts in milestone events, such as the recent runway dedication in New Mexico, where the state has built a $225 million spaceport with Virgin Galactic as its first tenant. His customers have been invited to his private isle in the Caribbean and to his South African retreat. And they’ve met Branson on a number of occasions.
Branson’s civilian “astronaut corps” currently numbers about 450 people. They’re a varied bunch: Some have mortgaged their homes for this brief ride into space, while others are millionaires. But they have one thing in common: They want to experience space, something just several hundred humans have done since the Soviet Union first did it in 1961.
Virgin Galactic’s spaceship is designed to take six passengers and two pilots on suborbital flights beyond Earth’s atmosphere, from which they can look back on the planet and out into the universe. They will experience about six minutes of weightlessness before they re-enter the atmosphere and glide back for a wheels-down landing.
The Enterprise made its first manned free flight last month from an altitude of more than 45,000 feet, gliding back for a landing on the Mojave Desert. The Hagles expect their flight to occur about 18 months from now, though that depends on the spacecraft passing additional safety tests.
Photo: Marc and Sharon Hagle of Winter Park are planning to take a trip in space aboard Virgin Galactic in about 18 months. The Hagles are shown here at an event in October at Orlando International Airport celebrating Virgin America’s new airline service to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Marc Hagle is chief executive officer of Tricor International, a Maitland-based real-estate development company.(GEORGE SKENE/ORLANDO SENTINEL / Oct. 13, 2010)
