JUST IN — Billionaire Richard Branson’s VSS Unity craft reaches space, lands safely

British businessman Richard Branson has gone where no billionaire has gone before by reaching space on board a Virgin Galactic vessel on Sunday.

The winged rocket ship took off at around 1440 UTC after its initial start time was pushed back due to bad weather at its New Mexico launchpad.

The space plane detached from the mother ship at an altitude of about 8 miles (13 kilometers) and fired its engine. It reached the edge of space at about 53 miles (88 kilometers) up. 

The crew successfully landed after an hour-long trip. 

The 70-year-old entrepreneur behind Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Records has beaten Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the ultimate space race between some of the world’s richest men.

Bezos plans to travel on July 20 on his own New Shepard suborbital rocketship built by his Blue Origin firm. The Amazon founder is set to pilot the spacecraft himself.

The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is set to fly to space nine days after Branson

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also has ambitions to travel to outer space and eventually Mars, although his timetable is less clear. However, Musk’s SpaceX project is expected to carry civilians into space as early as September this year.

Space X’s Elon Musk has plans to build a city on Mars

Who flew with Branson?

In a short video released on Twitter prior to the flight, Branson said his goal was “to turn the dream of space travel into a reality — for my grandchildren, for your grandchildren, for everyone.”

For his first flight, he was joined by two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, as well as Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett, and Sirisha Bandla, a research operations and government affairs vice president. 

Richard Branson, third from the right, headed into space with five other team members

Elon Musk, the founder of Space X and Tesla, suggested in a social media post that he would attend the launch.

“Will see you there to wish you the best,” he wrote on Twitter.

Did Branson’s plane fly high enough?

Ahead of the flight, Bezos’ Blue Origin company pointedly noted that Branson is not even set to cross what most countries see as the border of outer space.

But Bezos himself wished Branson “a successful and safe flight” on Instagram.

Branson’s VSS Unity will climb to over 80 kilometers, which the US Air Force and NASA consider to be the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. But the World Air Sports Federation, known by its French acronym FAI, is the world governing body for air sports and defines human spaceflight differently. 

US space agency NASA and the US Air Force both define an astronaut as anyone who has flown higher than 80 kilometers

The Lausanne-based organization defines outer space as 100 kilometers above Earth’s mean sea level, the so-called Karman Line, 12 kilometers higher than Branson is going to travel.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith dismissed Virgin Galactic’s approach as “a very different experience” because “they’re not flying above the Karman line.”

How much money is there in space tourism?

That controversy has not dissuaded people from snapping up tickets for the first space tourism flights.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber are among the 600 customers to have stumped up for the $250,000 (€210,000) seats.

Branson founded Virgin Galactic 17 years ago, with it now attempting to finish development testing this year so it can begin flying space tourism passengers in early 2022.

He, Musk and Bezos have pumped billions into their respective projects, but this could prove to be a canny investment.

Switzerland’s UBS predicts the value of the space tourism market will hit $3 billion annually by 2030.

fb,jf/jlw (AP, AFP, dpa)

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