Years ago, whenever I got an email from Burt Rutan, the legendary airplane designer and the mastermind behind the foundational spaceship designs at Virgin Galactic, Burt would always close with, “Looking up, WAY up!” Today, having finally flown to space myself just under two weeks ago in a spaceship that Rutan first conceived, I find myself thinking a lot about “Looking up, WAY up.”

Keith’s note: In 2021 I posted a book review of “Not Necessarily Rocket Science – A Beginners Guide To Life In The Space Age” by Kellie Gerardi – who just became an actual astronaut. So …. I am wondering if she is going to put out a revised version – with her daughter Luna’s input, of course. 😉 Update: @kelliegerardi Bold of me to write a whole damn book before the biggest life dream came true Chagrin!

This is the 9th and next to last blog I’ll write surrounding my inaugural spaceflight, which took place as a research and training mission that flew last week on Virgin Galactic. Here, I want to close the loop for you on the things I said I was so highly anticipating knowing once I had flown; I published that list in my 6th blog in this series, called “Anticipation.” So, here’s that list again, this time with answers about how each question turned out.

Keith’s note: VSS Unity Galactic05 has dropped from space and has landed back on Earth. Congratulations to new astronauts Alan Stern, Kellie Gerardi, and whoever the 3rd mystery person is. Its is always a fun day when one of your friends becomes an #astronaut But when TWO friends become astronauts – at the same time – its 2×2 as much fun. Fortuna Audentes Juvat — Ad Astra y’all

My reflections for today, launch day, are on risk and reward. In my view, both are integral parts of what it means to be human. Risk and reward are also sides of a single coin comes up in so many ways across the days of our lives. Like the risks of a one-shot flyby of Pluto that the New Horizons team pulled off so successfully, and the submersible journey I took to the Titanic, tomorrow’s expedition will be risky. But it will also full of promise.

My rookie spaceflight is so close now that it’s hard to believe–its time is really here. We plan to fly on Thursday, launching aboard Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft. As the flight nears, I’m hearing from a lot of friends and colleagues, with both questions and good wishes for the mission, which I really love. One colleague, a talented physicist named Setthivoine (Sett) You at Helicityspace Corporation (where I serve as an advisor) recently asked me in jest to verify for him that the world is indeed round. So I told him I’d do that, and adding that “bonus” science to my research and training mission.

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!

It’s just T-6 days to launch on my first space mission, which is set for liftoff on Thursday, November 2nd from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. Spaceport America is Virgin Galactic’s operations base for commercial suborbital missions. My blog today is about training for this mission. Unlike space tourists, those of us going to do research in space are there to work, and that means a whole different level of training than is needed just to ride aboard the vehicle as it goes through its flight paces. Most of that additional training is to ensure we’ll be ready to get our work done in the compressed timeline of just minutes during the actual spaceflight altitude portions of the mission.

As I write this blog, I’m about to leave on a business trip to Boston, to lead a science team meeting of the NASA New Horizons mission, which I serve as Principal Investigator (PI) for. The meeting is a typical business trip, one of over a 1000 that I’ve made in my career. My next business trip is as usual replete with admin assistance, travel reimbursement rules, and a post-trip expense report to file. But despite all that, it isn’t a routine trip at all.

Keith’s note: Virgin Galactic pulled off an apparently flawless flight into space today – two pilots took four commercial passengers into space, they did their science thing, looked out the window at apogee and got a nice dose of the Overview Effect, came home, and are probably eating lunch right now. I did a quick post flight interview on Deutsche Welle TV about the flight: Audio. Update: I was back on DW again at 4:00pm EDT to talk about this flight. Audio