Catch up in space: Virgin Galactic is allowed to take tourists into space

Saturday 26 June 2021

space catch upفض
Virgin Galactic is allowed to take tourists into space

The billionaire race for the space tourism business is getting closer. A few weeks before Jeff Bezos was allowed to shoot into space with a rocket from his company Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s company also obtained a license for space tours. Is he stealing the show from Bezos?

Billionaire Richard Branson is allowed to take space tourists with his space company Virgin Galactic. The US aviation authority granted the FAA the appropriate permission, such as the Virgin Galactic announcement. It evaluated test flight data of the Virgin space plane VSS Unity last month. The spaceship had flown to the farthest reaches of space with two pilots in June and returned safely to Earth.

SpaceShipTwo seats a total of six passengers. Branson himself also flew into space. Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said the FAA’s approval was encouraging. The first fully manned test flight is now scheduled for the summer.

With the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration, the race between three billionaires for tourist flights into space has heated up. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wants to be the first astronaut to fly into space with a rocket from his company, Blue Origin, on July 20. It’s unclear if Virgin Galactic Bezos will now steal the show. The rumor mill is simmering: apparently, Branson wants to beat Bezos and launch into space on July 4 – 16 days in advance.

The third billionaire who has also hit his lines is Tesla President Elon Musk with his company SpaceX. However, it should not stand in the way of the two. So far, it has been announced that it will begin its first flight with tourists into space by the end of the year. So far, astronauts have already traveled to the ISS with SpaceX.

$200,000 for zero gravity

Interesting in the race between Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin: Virgin flights don’t come at the same level as Bezos’s Blue Origin – so it’s a matter of opinion if they count as spaceflights.

While Virgin sees the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space just like NASA does at 50 miles (80 kilometers a good) above sea level, Blue Origin follows the definition of Fédération Internationale Aéronautique. Accordingly, space was reached only 100 km above Earth, which was achieved by Blue Origin, but Virgin Galactic did not.

Either way, investors seem to be enjoying the space race: on Friday they were ready to push Virgin Galactic shares into higher ground. After the FAA’s approval was announced, the cycle kicked off by about a third at times. In total, more than 600 people, including celebrities, are said to have purchased one of about $250,000 (about €205,000) a ticket for the 90-minute, few-minute weightless journey.