HOW BRANSON WAS FIRST IN THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE
Tycoon be ats Amazon’s Bezos in Virgin Galactic rocket
RICHARD Branson has boldly gone where no billionaire has gone before.
‘Astronaut 001’, as he named himself, yesterday travelled to the edge of space, beating rival billionaire Jeff Bezos by nine days.
The tycoon became the first civilian to do so a week away from his 71st birthday, kick-starting an era of space tourism.
Such trips will give the rich the opportunity to board a spacecraft, experience weightlessness and look back at the curve of the Earth – at around €210,000 per ticket.
It has taken a long time for the dream to become a reality, with Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company being founded in 2004.
Yesterday’s trip was delayed by 90 minutes due to stormy weather at Spaceport America in New Mexico. But eventually Branson and five crew mates from Virgin Galactic were launched in their winged rocket ship at about 3.40am.
A live stream of the trip had begun with the entrepreneur signing in, wearing a blue jumpsuit, and quipping: ‘The name’s Branson, Richard Branson, astronaut double
‘The whole thing was just magical’
oh-one. Licence to thrill.’ The spacecraft was then carried up into the atmosphere by its ‘mothership’, named after Branson’s mother Eve, who passed away in January.
The team reached an altitude of around 53miles (85km), and speeds of Mach 3.
After a four-minute spell during which passengers could experience weightlessness and look back at Earth out of the VSS Unity’s 17 porthole-style windows, the craft then pointed downwards, touching down again at around 4.40pm.
The attempts by both Branson and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to make it into space have been dubbed the ‘billionaire space race’.
The Virgin founder denied trying to upstage Bezos’s Blue Origin company, claiming: ‘It’s honestly not a race.’
Last week he said: ‘If it’s a race, it’s a race to produce wonderful spaceships that can make many more people be able to access space.‘
But the London-born billionaire was not originally supposed to go to the edge of space until later this summer, and assigned himself an earlier flight after Bezos announced plans to enter space from Texas on July 20 – the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
There is a debate over whether yesterday’s space flight was actually achieved as the VSS Unity fell short of the 62-mile-high ‘Karman line’ commonly seen as the boundary for space.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US awards astronaut wings to people who demonstrate flight beyond 50miles above the Earth’s surface.
The crew were watched by 500 people, including Branson’s wife, children and grandchildren. On the return flight, the tycoon hailed the ‘experience of a lifetime’ and the
‘hard, hard work’ that went into the flight.
Later, he told a press conference: ‘Like most kids, I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space.
‘The whole thing was just magical.’ Another of his rivals in the space tourism race, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, arrived in New Mexico to witness the flight, wishing Branson ‘Godspeed!’ via Twitter.
Bezos likewise sent his wishes for a safe and successful flight, though Blue Origin has pointed out it plans to take clients higher and offer bigger windows.
The risks to Branson and his crew were clear from 2007, when a rocket motor test in California’s
Mojave Desert left three engineers dead, and in 2014, when a Virgin Galactic rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.