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with high-end brand positioning as with the travel
business. Anne got her real job. It seems to have
worked out for Nott as well.
“My wife understands me better than I
understand myself,” he says. “We came and in
hindsight – we all want heaven and everything
besides – I wish I’d had the experiences I’d had but
had also come to California when I was twenty.”
Although Nott’s joints won’t allow him to
run eight-minute miles anymore, he is an avid
hiker. He jokes that he takes hiking as seriously
as flying – with maps, weather checks, provisions.
And when he returns from a hike, his wife asks him
if he enjoyed it. “I always say, ‘No, but it was very
satisfying.’”
PRELUDE
TO TOURIST
SPACE TRAVEL
N
ott says he felt the same way about
launching Google’s Alan Eustace into near
space for his record-setting skydive. And while it
may seem gaudy to take a man to 135,850 feet
just so he can fall back down to earth again, the
entire project was again an exercise in “technology
for art’s sake.”
Think about it.
A man encased in a self-contained breathing
apparatus – a space suit, basically – tethered to a
balloon, went 25 miles up with a GoPro camera,
took some pictures, and dove back down with a
modified drogue parachute that kept him from
tumbling into pieces until he got close enough
to the ground to glide to a gentle stop – all in a
matter of hours.
The proof-of-concept implications for quick
and relatively inexpensive manned space travel,
scientific exploration, and experimentation, egress
into longer-term operations, and so on, are
mind-boggling. Most of all, the delivery
system was astoundingly simple. It was
Nott’s secret weapon: a balloon.
Eustace’s jump also served to advance
the goals of another key player in the
project, Taber MacCallum, one of the
original Biosphere2 inhabitants – that
early ‘90s experiment in simulated space
colonization. McCallum and fellow
Biosphere2 alum, Jayne Poynter, emerged
from the Biosphere, got married and
started Paragon Space Development.
Their initial vision for the company was
to develop transport – theirs, in fact –
to Mars. Since then, the company has
become a premier developer of life-
support systems for astronauts and others
navigating extreme environments.
Eustace tapped MacCallum to
develop a system that would enable him
to breathe pure oxygen during his round
trip. McCallum, in turn, tapped Nott as an
advisor for his next big idea: World View.
The company hopes to take the basic
innovations and technology of Eustace’s
jump to a rather logical next phase: balloon
rides to the edge of space and back.
Passengers will travel in a luxurious,
pressurized capsule – stocked with three-
olive martinis and Wi-Fi judging by World
46
winter
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spr ing
UP
&
OUT
Day Tripping: For a mere $75,000, the team at World View plan to launch up to six tourists
and two crew members to the 100,000-foot level in a comfortable pressurized capsule
(pictured) via a helium balloon, where they’ll stay for two hours before returning to land
gently to Earth. At 100,000 feet they will see the curvature of the Earth and enjoy all the
extraordinary sights enjoyed by astronauts.