Richard Branson reaches space beating his richer rival Jeff Bezos

Monday, July 12, 2021

On Sunday, Richard Branson, the famous billionaire speedily entered into space aboard his own winged rocket ship, bringing astro-tourism into reality and beating out Jeff Bezos, his exceedingly richer rival buddy.

From the Virgin Galactic space-tourism company, the 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates reached an altitude of 53.5 miles (86 kilometers) over the New Mexico desert to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and observe Earth’s curvature and then glided back to a runway landing.

To quote proud Branson, “The whole thing, it was just magical.”

The brief, up-and-down flight — the space plane’s portion took only about 15 minutes, or about as long as Alan Shepard’s first U.S. spaceflight in 1961 — was a splashy and unabashedly commercial plug for Virgin Galactic, which is all set to kick-start this journey from 2022, taking paying customers on joyrides.

The billionaire is the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, defeating Jeff Bezos, planet’s richest man, by nine days. Also, Richard became the second septuagenarian to go into space. Astronaut John Glenn flew on the shuttle at age 77 in 1998.

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