When Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, the goal was simple: to offer civilian space travel by the end of the decade. Fifteen years, a dozen delays and one catastrophic rocket crash later, we are on the verge of space tourism becoming a reality. New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle has witnessed the fall and rise of Virgin Galactic first-hand. Over the last five years, he has spent thousands of hours at Virgin’s ‘spaceport’ in the Mojave desert, befriending the pilots who are risking their lives to make space tourism a reality.

In May 2021, Schmidle came to Intelligence Squared to tell the remarkable story of the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic’s campaign to build a space tourism company. He has followed a handful of characters – Mark Stucky, Virgin’s lead test pilot; Richard Branson, the eccentric billionaire funding the venture; Mike Moses, the grounded, unflappable president; Mike Alsbury, the test pilot killed in a fatal crash; and others – through personal and professional dramas, in pursuit of their collective goal: to make space tourism a reality.

In this special online event, he led us through the human drama of a previously unseen world – and beyond.