The British entrepreneur Richard Branson took a flight to the edge of space in a Virgin Galactic rocket plane VSS Unity on Sunday, after bad overnight weather in the launch area caused a delay. Branson is flying with two pilots and three other passengers, according to The Guardian.
His flight is taking place just days before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos launches his own rocket, New Shepard. Richard Branson and five crewmates from his VirginGalactic space tourism company reached an altitude of about 88 kilometres over the New Mexico desert and experienced three to four minutes of weightlessness. The crew landed safley landed back home to arunway landing.
Richard Branson tweeted: “I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do.”
The flight set new record as Branson became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Jeff Bezos by nine days. Also, Richardon Branson became only the second septugenarian to depart for space.
Richard Branson owes his fortune to a conglomerate of businesses bearing the “Virgin” brand name, including Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Galactic.
The space plane with a twin-fuselage aircraft with his space plane attached underneath took off the first stage of the flight. The space plane then detached from the mother ship Unity at an altitude of about 13 kilometres and fired its engine, reaching the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic in race with Jeff Bezos owned Blue Origin and Elon Musk owned SpaceX in the space tourism business space.
