Scottish business tycoon vows to follow space dream despite tragic crash

A business tycoon has vowed to continue with his dream of becoming Scotland’s first space tourist despite the fatal crash of a Virgin Galactic rocket ship in the US.

Self-made millionaire Brian Gillies has spent £125,000 and put in years of training for the three-hour trip above Earth on Sir Richard Branson’s space travel venture.

But the tragedy in California has not put the Glaswegian property dealer and financier off fulfilling his childhood ambition of voyaging 62 miles above Earth.

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Post, Mr Gillies who is currently based in Singapore said he trusted Sir Richard to make the right call on the future of the project.

The 53-year-old said: “This is very sad news, I really feel for the pilots and their families.

“The only small consolation is the pilots were involved in something they really loved. They are all ex-military test pilots or ex-astronauts so were very aware of the risks.

“I have met quite a few of them and I had a drink with one of them last year and he told me that he could not believe he was being paid to do this. He said it was his dream job.”

He added: “We all take commercial air travel for granted but we often forget about the test pilots who died to make it safe.

“I like, trust and respect Sir Richard Branson. Richard is going on the first commercial flight himself with his family. He and his team will not let us travel into space as passengers until they know it is as safe as they can make it.”

Mr Gillies, who was a Tory donor and is a benefactor to a string of Scots charities, signed up for the space trip in 2009 and has already been to the £151 million spaceport in America’s New Mexico desert for weeks of intensive training.

He continued: “This tragic accident will not for a second change my decision to go into space if I get the chance. This is something I have wanted to do since I was seven-years-old.

“There is a strong chance that I would one of the first 1,000 human beings to go into space how can you let even something as tragic as this make you shrink away from an opportunity as amazing as that?

“If anything this tragedy will make me more determined to go, so that the sacrifices will not have been in vain.”

Mr Gillies, who started his property empire Alchemist Estates with a £40,000 redundancy cheque in the 1990s, is on the board of the Galactic Unite charity in New York.

Made up of both future astronauts and Virgin Galactic staff, the charity aims to raise millions to fund scholarships for children from poor backgrounds to study science, technology, engineering or maths at universities around the world.

Yesterday, Virgin boss Sir Richard, 64, travelled to the Mojave Air and Space Port where the craft was being developed as he vowed to carry on with the project.

He said: “It is fair to say that all 400 engineers who work here, and I think most people in the world, would love to see the dream living on.

“We owe it to our test pilots to find out what went wrong.”

Sir Richard described the journey to his spaceport as “one of the most difficult trips I have ever had to make”.

The tycoon said the tragedy, in which another pilot was seriously injured, was “a devastating loss”.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket came down in the Mojave Desert in California, having “suffered a serious anomaly”.

Writing on his website he said: “We’ve always known that the road to space is extremely difficult and that every new transportation system has to deal with bad days early in their history.”

SpaceShipTwo was designed to be carried into the air by the WhiteKnightTwo jet and then released before igniting its rocket to travel into space.

The doomed flight crashed on Friday morning. The lead pilot managed to eject and parachute from the stricken craft and was airlifted to hospital in a critical condition.

On his journey to California Sir Richard said: “Mojave is also where I want to be with the dedicated and hard-working people who are now in shock at this devastating loss.

“Everyone at Virgin Galactic, The Spaceship Company and Scaled Composites is deeply saddened by today’s events. All our thoughts are with the families of everyone affected by this tragic event, and we are doing everything we can to support them.”