In a wild and expensive spectacle, the 70-year-old British founder of Virgin Galactic, billionaire Sir Richard Branson, launched into space on Sunday morning aboard a Virgin Galactic flight and returned home safely.
The flight was pushed back 90 minutes from its original takeoff time because overnight weather at Spaceport America in New Mexico delayed some of the flight preparations, but they ended up taking off at roughly 10:30 a.m. ET. Stephen Colbert hosted the livestream, and Khalid dropped a new song in celebration, titled “New Normal.” The entire flight took less than two hours.
Branson rode the flight as a member of the crew, and checked out the cabin experience for future paying customers, according to The New York Times. In addition to Branson, the rocket plane SpaceShipTwo also carried the pilots and three crew mates, including Beth Moses, the chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, the lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, the vice president of government affairs and research operations.
Bandla, who became the second India-born woman and third person of Indian descent to leave Earth’s atmosphere, according to Newsweek, is also conducting a research project for the University of Florida. She said in a promotional video that Branson’s goal of using the private sector to bring space travel to more people could “get people from different backgrounds, different geographies, different communities into space.” That is, of course, you can afford the steep $250,000 ticket price.
The plane flies about 80 kilometers, or nearly 50 miles, into the upper atmosphere, which leaves some wondering if that actually counts as space. The U.S. recognizes 80 kilometers as the boundary of space, but there isn’t an international agreement on where space begins. The passengers will experience some kind of weightlessness at the top of the arc, but they won’t have escaped gravity, the Times reported. Instead, they will simply be falling at the same pace as the plane, which will help them feel that coveted weightlessness.
In a little over a week, Jeff Bezos will also take the plunge into the questionable zone of space travel, in which his Blue Origin flight will reach above 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, above the Earth’s surface. Despite the timing and appearance that there may be a rivalry between the two space-traveling billionaires, Branson told The Today Show earlier this week that there isn’t much of a fight.
That didn’t stop Blue Origin from hyping the size of its own spacefaring vessel’s windows in a Saturday tweet, just a day before the Virgin Galactic launch.
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