Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of space tourism company Virgin Galactic, has officially been launched into space.
After 17 years of development and over a billion of dollars invested in Virgin Galactic, Branson was carried into space on Sunday (July 11) aboard the company’s VSS Unity spacecraft.
The aircraft launched above the skies of New Mexico with two pilots guiding the vehicle carrying the billionaire founder and three Virgin Galactic employees. VSS Unity accelerated to faster than three times the speed of sound in a climb to the edge of space.
VSS Unity then performed a slow backflip in microgravity when the Virgin Galactic crew was weightless and floated around the spacecraft cabin. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 86.1 kilometers (53.5 miles, or about 282,000 feet).
The vehicle then returned through the atmosphere in a glide to land back on the runway of Spaceport America in New Mexico where it had taken off from earlier.
The U.S. officially considers pilots who have flown above 80 kilometers (or about 262,000 feet) to be astronauts.
VSS Unity is designed to hold up to six passengers along with two pilots. The company has about 600 reservations for tickets on future flights, sold at prices between $200,000 U.S. and $250,000 U.S. each.
This was the fourth spaceflight to date for Virgin Galactic, its second so far this year, and the first carrying more than one passenger. Virgin Galactic is aiming to begin commercial spaceflights in early 2022.
Fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos has announced that he will fly on his company Blue Origin’s first passenger spaceflight on July 20. Virgin Galactic rearranged its schedule to fly Branson into space nine days ahead of Bezos.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are competing in the suborbital space tourism sector, with both companies’ spacecraft carrying passengers to the edge of space to float in microgravity for a couple of minutes.
Branson’s company believes that there is a market to carry as many as two million people on suborbital spaceflights priced in the $250,000 to $500,000 range, with the market expanding if and when costs come down.
