Shefket Chapadjiev is ready. He’s been ready for 12 years.
But the Elk Grove Village man has been wondering lately if he’ll get the chance to rocket into space before he dies.
“My health is so-so,” the 80-year-old native Bulgarian says. “At my age, I’m still fairly well. I’ve got high blood pressure and diabetes.”
He still believes in Virgin owner British billionaire Richard Branson’s dream of commercial space flight. That’s why he paid more than $175,000 in 2007 toward a $200,000 ticket to be one of the first passengers.
“I have done everything in my life I’ve wanted to do,” he figured. “So what the hell.”
He says he has a contract with Virgin Galactic as thick as a Bible. But he’s weary of the endless emails from the space company, promising it’s going to be “soon, soon, soon” — without being given a launch date.
A couple of months ago, he called Virgin and got the director of astronaut relations.
“Listen, I’ve waited long enough. I’m 80 years old,” he told her in his thick accent. “I don’t think I’ll be able to fly. What is my option to get the money back?”
The young woman on the other end listened, then convinced him to be patient a little while longer.
“She said: ‘I just want to tell you, if you don’t need the money, I would hold off for a few more months because I think this time the rocket is ready, and you are one of the first ones,’ ” he says.
Chapadjiev says he doesn’t need the money. He made a fortune in printing. But time is a-ticking.
“In the Bulgarian press, they keep asking me, ‘What happened?’ ” he says. “I don’t know what to tell them.”
Virgin has had setbacks with the program. Most notably, a spacecraft crashed during a test flight in 2014, killing one pilot and injuring another.
Virgin didn’t respond to efforts to reach the company for comment.
On its website, the company proclaims it expects to begin flights for paying passengers some time this year.
Late last year, a giddy Sir Richard appeared on CNBC in one of his company’s slick, blue spacesuits.
“Virgin Galactic next year: We’re going to have an incredibly exciting year. I’ll be going to space, and other people will be going to space.” Branson said.
For now, Chapadjiev must content himself with the email updates, occasional gifts with the Virgin Galactic logo — including a space jacket and a key fob — as well as invitations to join Branson for swanky dinners in New York, at Virgin’s Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert and at Branson’s “private island paradise” in the the British Virgin Islands.
He took Branson up on the offer for dinner in New Mexico a few years back but hopes the next time he heads there, it will be to board a spaceship.
“They say it might happen this year, but, inside my heart, I’m not sure,” he says.
