NOVEMBER | COVER FEATURE
“Between 1900-1920 we went from
zero cars on the road to having 35
million cars, trucks and buses,”…
…Former Virgin Galactic CEO Will Whitehorn
says. “We suddenly had mass communication
taking place, and safe drugs were available. So
when someone says we can’t cope with the pace
of change, tell them we’ve been through this
before.”
Sometimes characterised as serial
entrepreneur Richard Branson’s ‘right-
hand man’, Whitehorn met Access after a
space-themed ‘BigTalk’ event at creative
communications agency DRPG’s offices to talk
events, space and climate change. His musings
provided (vacuum-packed?) food for thought for
“We’re revolutionising
the cost of space
technology and getting
in and out, and many
companies will benefit
from this"
$431m by 2023.
For the events industry – aside from the
bragging rights and mind-blowing potential
offered by events in zero gravity – there are
tangential points of interest.
“There has already been an event held in
space, of sorts,” Whitehorn tells Access. “Elon
Musk already did it, and it was a marketing
stunt in space, but space travel will go
commercial next year, and it’ll be a two-and-a-
half hour round trip, so the potential is big.”
Elon Musk’s ambitious stunt on 6 February
2018 saw his companies, Tesla and SpaceX,
propel a cherry red Tesla Roadster into space.
The car was outfitted with cameras to capture
the views and carried a dummy pilot, a digital
copy of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction book series
Foundation, and a plaque engraved with 6,000
SpaceX employees’ names
Space age venues
eventprofs worldwide.
Putting the ‘launch’ into product launch
Virgin Galactic is one of three billionaire-
owned companies currently locked in fierce
competition to bring space tourism to the
masses. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s
Blue Origin form its well-qualified opposition.
Set to float on the New York stock exchange
later this year, Branson is believed to have
invested around US$880m in Virgin Galactic
since its inception in 2007. The company plans
to launch the first commercial flights next year
and the company forecasts revenues will hit
30
This is just one of the many innovative
initiatives Whitehorn has been involved
with and his space-age thinking has already
improved some venues on earth. Whitehorn,
now chairman of the Scottish Event Campus,
applied his thinking to Glasgow’s SSE Hydro,
which is now the second busiest indoor arena in
the world.
“The industrial decline in Britain in the 70s
was desperate, and had really affected the
docks in Glasgow. Nobody expected something
like the Hydro to work, but as technology had
evolved, thanks in part to space research, more
became possible. I got a call from an architect
from Foster + Partners who designed the Space
Port, and he ended up designing the Hydro with