Sir Richard Branson. Astronaut 001. This is the first entry in the book, in which all modern passengers who, as a British billionaire, board the Virgin Galactic spacecraft and set out to space will write their names.
“I dreamed of this as a little boy. But there’s nothing to prepare you for looking at Earth from space, ”Branson said shortly after returning to Earth from eighty-five kilometers.
The journey into space symbolically opens up for ordinary mortals as well. Several space tourists had already looked into space, but a billionaire with a noble title from the British queen was the first civilian to do so in a private-made machine. In addition, in a modern space race, he overtook his opponent and currently the richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos.
The spectacular show lasted over two hours, culminating in seventeen years of work on a civilian space flight project. That is, flights that will get practically anyone on the border of space who has enough courage and money for it – specifically some five and a half million crowns. There are no other restrictions.
And not even any rockets. After four o’clock in the afternoon, a VMS Eve, named after Branson’s mother, took off from Spaceport America’s private aerospace airport in New Mexico.
The plane carried the VSS Unity space shuttle, which was controlled by pilots Dave Mackay and Colin Bennet, and specialists Beth Moses, Sirisha Bandla and Michael Masucci sat in the crew seats next to Branson. This was the first time that Virgin Galactic had made full use of the capacity of its spacecraft for the first time as part of test flights.
Shortly before half past five European time, at an altitude of 13.5 kilometers, he disengaged from Eve and ignited his jet propulsion. In forty seconds, the rocket reached three times the speed of sound and headed for space, its gates touching eighty-five kilometers.
At that moment, the crew could begin to enjoy a five-minute state of weightlessness and views of the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of outer space, which they could watch from a total of seventeen windows, with which the shuttle is equipped. But after this five-minute period, which was a passenger for astronauts, they had to return to their seats and prepare to return.
It went as smoothly as the whole flight, and VSS Unity landed lightly at the private spaceport America Spaceport America in New Mexico, which belongs to Virgin Galactic, after 6 p.m. Richard Branson and other crew members disembarked shortly afterwards.
“We’ll remember this for the rest of our lives,” said Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic. It was undoubtedly a turning point. However, the opponent in the form of Bezos’s Blue Origin team did not forget to remind that their mission in the New Shepard rocket with a six-member crew on board will reach higher – up to 105 kilometers. It is scheduled to start on July 20.
It will thus cross the so-called Kármán border, which determines the divide between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Branson’s team will suffice with the definition of NASA, the US Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force – for all these institutions, the universe begins fifty miles above sea level, which, converted to kilometers, means a height very slightly over eighty kilometers.
Quite amused, this fight must be watched by another of the billionaires, who focused on conquering the universe, Elon Musk. His SpaceX rockets have represented NASA technology, carrying astronauts and cargo to the ISS space station orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 400 kilometers. But Branson, the third richest man on the planet, wished him all the best before the start.
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