Robbed Jeff Bezos’s ‘spotlight’, was the first billionaire to fly into space on his own ship
“Conquering space isn’t easy because it’s literally rocket science,” British billionaire Richard Branson told CNN in a 2018 television appearance. Three years later, this billionaire businessman flew into space in one of the spaceplanes created by his company Virgin Galactic.
Branson’s journey into space began with the founding of Virgin Galactic in 2004 – 4 years after the birth of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and 2 years after Elon Musk’s SpaceX was founded.
Birth of Virgin Galactic
After the 1969 human Moon landing, Branson believed that one day, more people like him would have the opportunity to go into space, too. Since then, however, the pace of innovation has slowed, partly because failures in a space shuttle program led to less support from Congress in the industry.
He eventually founded his own space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, in 2004 with the intention of using a variant of the SpaceShipOne – the reusable space plane built by Scaled Composites, for Virgin Galactic’s space tour.
Delayed due to fatal accident
Virgin Galactic’s original plan was to put 3,000 passengers on the SpaceShipTwo ships in the first five years, for $208,000 a ticket.
Things started to take off on June 21, 2004, when Scaled Composites pilot Mike Melvill piloted the SpaceShipOne on the first private suborbital flight in history, reaching an altitude of more than 100 kilometers. Virgin Galactic officially launched just a few months later, on September 27, 2004.
However, a number of tragic failures delayed Virgin Galactic’s original plans. The first of these explosions occurred in July 2007, resulting in the deaths of three Scaled Composites employees.
Tragedy happened again in October 2014 during the first test flight of the SpaceShipTwo prototype. The ship exploded in the sky over the Mojave Desert, killing co-pilot Michael Alsbury.
Open the door to the “Gateway to Space”
In 2016, Virgin Galactic unveiled a new SpaceShipTwo model, called VSS Unity, during a ceremony in the Mojave Desert. Among the new features, the new spacecraft is integrated with several more features to ensure the safety of the crew.
The company also announced the launch of a separate subsidiary in 2017 called Virgin Orbit, to send satellites into space aboard a modified Boeing 747. Virgin Orbit launched the first batch of satellites last July.
In 2019, Branson’s company opened the world’s first commercial space station, “Gateway to Space,” at its Spaceport America facility in New Mexico. In March 2021, Virgin Galactic announced the first product of the next-generation SpaceShip III.
Race to space with other billionaires
Referring to space travel, people will immediately think of the confrontation between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos – the founder of Blue Origin, the company also has the purpose of selling tickets to super-rich guests to conquer space.
On June 7, 2021, Jeff Bezos announced that he would go into space on July 20 with Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft. Shortly after, Virgin Galactic announced that Richard Branson would fly into space on July 11th.
Although after the flight, Bezos congratulated Branson on social networks, but it seems that they still consider each other as rivals and “with face, not content”. Blue Origin once posted a “cà khà” comment on Twitter that the Virgin Galactic flight had only flown below the Karman line (the line that defines the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and the universe) while their spaceship was designed to fly over this road.
Elon Musk once said he would support Virgin Galactic by flying into space on one of the company’s space planes. However, it is said that that is not enough to cover up the animosity between the two billionaires.
Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos (Photo: Internet).
In the battle between Branson and Bezos, Branson has the right to boast that his company has sent humans to space in test flights while every Blue Origin test flight to date has not carried any. Which astronaut?
Branson’s rocket carried the first batch of satellites into orbit last January. While the rocket isn’t as powerful as Musk’s Falcon 9 or Bezos’ New Glenn, Branson’s company is seen as the space industry leader in the race to develop rockets specifically designed to deliver space rockets. small satellite into space.
Virgin Galactic also has some bold long-term visions, including the creation of a supersonic, high-speed suborbital jet that will be able to ferry people between cities at lightning speed. face.
Source: Space, Interesting Engineering
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