Richard Branson’s successful space flight

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A thunderstorm had delayed the start. With a little delay, entrepreneur Richard Branson then headed for space – nine days before competitor Jeff Bezos.

Most recently, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos’ coverage of space flights had been tailored to the – unequal – duel of the billionaires. Now Branson has won the race, at least in terms of timing. After a delay of 1.5 hours due to a thunderstorm, the Virgin Galactic boss arrived in space on board the Spaceshiptwo VSS Unity spaceplane, together with three crew members and two pilots. Before the successful landing, Branson and Co. were able to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness.

At 4:30 p.m. German time, the 70-year-old left the Spaceport America space airport in New Mexico for the Unity 22 mission. First, with the support of the parent aircraft VMS Eve, it went up to an altitude of around 15 kilometers. Then the VSS Unity disengaged and ignited its own engine. With Mach 3 in the meantime, it went to an altitude of almost 283.00 feet, i.e. almost 86 kilometers. The plane landed again after about 90 minutes.

Strictly speaking, Branson was only in space according to the American definition. The so-called Kármán line, which is located 100 kilometers above sea level, is actually considered the boundary to space. A point that competitor Jeff Bezos and his team, who want to bring it to this level on July 20, also critically commented. In addition, Bezos’ company pointed out that the New Shepard they used was a real rocket and did less harm to the ozone layer.

That shouldn’t bother Branson as much. With the successful flight, he pre-empted Bezos, but had denied in advance that he wanted to drive the Amazon founder into the parade on the chosen date. For both billionaires, space flights were about a childhood dream that they wanted to fulfill. In addition, space tourism is to be boosted in this way. Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin want to sell space flights to paying customers in the future. Virgin Galactic is said to have gotten rid of tickets for up to $ 250,000.

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