Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson is scheduled to take off with the crew of the test flight of his Virgin Galactic space plane today—two weeks just before Jeff Bezos. This would be but a different landmark achievement by Branson, marking a new era of private industrial space travel. Last week, Branson had tweeted: “I’ve always been a dreamer… My mum taught me to never give up and to reach for the stars. On July 11, it’s time to turn that dream into a reality aboard the next Virgin Galactic spaceflight.” He will be “testing the private astronaut experience” alongside 4 mission specialists and two pilots.
That’s not all. The billionaire also shared a teaser of an extra announcement right after his flight. “When we return, I will announce something very exciting to give more people a chance to become astronauts, because space does belong to us all,” he mentioned. “So watch this space.” VSS Unity spacecraft will have onboard Virgin Galactic’s mission specialists, such as chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett, vice-president of government affairs at Virgin Galactic Sirisha Bandla, and pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci. The one-of-a-sort encounter will be livestreamed on the company’s site, as properly as on its Twitter, YouTube and Facebook channels.
Branson’s flight into space is the most current development in the significant billionaire space race. Before him, Jeff Bezos, founder of retail giant Amazon, grabbed headlines last month with news of his travel to space on July 20 as element of the very first crewed flight by his space enterprise Blue Origin. For more than two decades, each Branson and Bezos have been testing suborbital rockets to take on a 2,300-mile-per-hour ride above earth. Branson, Bezos and even Elon Musk have been major the new age of industrial spaceflight with technologies that would be economical and protected.
However, if all goes as per program, Branson would turn into the true showstopper with an early takeoff. In interviews, although, Branson has stated that he has no intention of competing with anybody. In truth, he has agreed to invite Bezos to watch the occasion. In a CNN interview, he mentioned that any suggestion that Virgin Galactic could be compromising security in an work to get Branson to space just before Bezos is “completely wrong”.
Virgin Galactic (a carrier airplane that can attain higher altitudes about 90 km to view earth’s curvature) would fly with industrial space transportation operator licence approval granted by the Federal Aviation Administration, the biggest transportation agency of the US government, which regulates all elements of civil aviation, as properly as surrounding international waters.
Space travel now does not look so distant. With certified space travellers, the digital revolution and sophisticated tech, we will see a new class of explorers in the future. More firms are putting bets on the sector in the coming months—rocket-builder Astra and satellite broadband-focused AST & Science are in talks with firms Rocket Lab, Spire Global, BlackSky, Momentus.
Talking about the possibilities in the space travel marketplace for firms like Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Branson told CNBC in an interview last week: “There’s room for 20 space companies to take people up there… The more spaceships we can build, the more we can bring the price down and the more we’ll be able to satisfy demand, and that will happen over the years to come.”
Earlier, Virgin Galactic’s leadership had forecast that “around two million people can experience” space flights that are priced in the $250,000-$500,000 variety, as per reports. At the moment, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are competing to take passengers on quick flights to the edge of space (suborbital tourism), whilst Musk’s SpaceX plans to launch private passengers on additional, multi-day flights (orbital tourism), as per reports.