My Suborbital Life Blog 5: Hi Five! — S. Alan Stern

Virgin Galactic’s Galactic 05 suborbital mission I am flying on, still set for November 2nd, is the fifth commercial suborbital revenue mission for Virgin Galactic. Among myself and the other revenue customers on the flight, we’ve been referring to the mission as “High 5!”. And if it does, I’m pretty sure you’ll see some high 5’s among us on flight day!

But another thing you’ll see on flight day are our various flight patches. Just below, side by side are the ones by VG, our flight provider, and SwRI. SwRI, my employer, is sponsoring my flight as a research and space training exercise designed to gain experience for future suborbital flights we will fly on.

I love VG’s patch design, which contains a lot of symbolism in a really smart way. VG described the many cool aspects of the patch design in the blog post I copied just below. I know my fellow suborbital G05 researcher, Kellie Gerardi also has a mission patch, but I’ll leave it to astro Kellie to reveal and discuss her patch her own way.

Virgin Galactic’s Galactic 05 flight patch is featured in this tweet.

But what I most want to tell you about here is our SwRI G05 mission patch. It includes a legacy company logo from the time that we began this project more than a decade ago, five stars for G05, a stylized VG Unity spacecraft (the one we’re flying on), and the names of myself as principal investigator and my colleague Dr. Dan Durda, also of SwRI, who is the mission co-investigator. The rocket icon by my name indicates I am the SwRI space flyer on this mission. The blue arch represents the flight profile of our mission. Finally, the US flag represents the country where I and SwRI are based; the only country, I note, to have commercial suborbital space lines!

The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) mission patch for the Galactic 05 research mission (photo credit: SwRI).

Before I wrap up this blog, I also want to say a little about some of the personal mementos we are able to fly. VG permits us to each have two small zip lock bags with personal mementos of our choosing (of course, each item has to pass VG safety and other inspections) to fly in our flight suit pockets.

Among the items I’m flying are pictures of immediate family, some mission patches and decals from this mission and NASA’s New Horizons mission, which I also serve as Principal Investigator on. I’m also flying a ring my late father made in his metal shop that was a gift to me, which I took down to the wreck of the Titanic in the summer of 2022, and a ground down pencil that symbolizes the perseverance that many of my spaceflight projects have require to succeed, this one included! And in addition, I’m also flying a few mementos for close friends and relatives, and a small model of the SwRI company mascot, a roadrunner, which is common to south Texas where the company has been headquartered since its inception over 75 years ago. Each of these items is personally meaningful to me, and I know I’ll enjoy having them after the flight as “space flown items” that accompanied me on my first spaceflight.

One of the items I plan to bring on the flight is a montage of members of my immediate family; another is a ring my dad made which I wore in this picture over 13,000 feet below the North Atlantic on our dive to the Titanic last summer (photo credit: Alan Stern).

I’ll close now by asking, what would you bring in your pocket for your first spaceflight?

Alan Stern is a planetary scientist and aerospace executive. He is a former NASA Associate Administrator for Science, and a former board chair of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. He has now been a part of 30 NASA, ESA, and commercial spaceflight flight mission teams, 15 of those as mission or instrument Principal Investigator, including the almost $1B New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.