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VIRGIN GALACTIC

Disney imagineer joins Virgin Galactic team

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With preparations underway for the first future astronauts to arrive at Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic has brought in Joe Rohde as a strategic advisor to help design and guide the overall experience.

Rohde is Virgin Galactic’s first experience architect, bringing more than 40 years’ experience from Walt Disney Imagineering where he led projects that transformed the image of Disney’s iconic experiences and attractions. According to a Virgin Galactic press release, the work he is starting will “stimulate curiosity, guide the imagination and anchor the Virgin Galactic customer experience with purposefulness and meaning.”

Rohde recently visited New Mexico for the first time and, from Spaceport America, spoke about his initial thoughts for a short video as he starts his journey to develop the experience.

“When I was born, there was nothing in the sky except stars,” he said. “I have seen the entirety of the history of space unfold across my lifetime.”

As someone who has spend his career working with the transformational power of adventure projects, Rohde said those experiences can change people.

“This is one of the most profound things that can happen to you,” he said of the Virgin Galactic space experience. “To go to space and look back at the earth is a spectacular opportunity with huge potential for transformational change in a person.”

Rohde said this particular location in southern New Mexico has two powerful draws. It’s at a powerful juncture in time. Having been here with cultures passing through back as far as can be measured, it is also the place from which new history is going to begin.

“It’s very rare to be a person who gets to be in the place, at the time when history begins,” he said. “What Virgin Galactic is doing in democratizing space travel has reached a moment where it is about to enter history. It’s happening right here in New Mexico.”

He called it a “machine for epiphanies, activism and social action that is producing heroes.”

Joe Rohde, Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic

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