Richard Branson wins billionaires space race, ushers in new era of space tourism

In each case, billionaire entrepreneurs are risking injury or death to fulfill their childhood aspirations — and advance the goal of making human spaceflight unexceptional.

“They’re putting their money where their mouth is, and they’re putting their body where their money is,” said Eric Anderson, chair of Space Adventures Ltd., a company that charters launches to orbit. “That’s impressive, frankly.”

At 8:40 a.m. Mountain time, a carrier aircraft with the rocket plane, named VSS Unity, tucked underneath, rose off the runway and headed to an altitude of about 45,000 feet. There, Unity was released, and a few moments later, its rocket motor ignited, accelerating the space plane on an upward arc.

Although Unity had made three previous trips to space, this was its first launch that resembled a full commercial flight of the sort that Virgin Galactic has promised to offer the general public, with two pilots — David Mackay and Michael Masucci — and four more crew members, including Branson.

This flight resembled a party for Virgin Galactic and the nascent space tourism business. Guests included Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX; Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico; and about 60 customers who have paid for future Virgin Galactic flights.

Stephen Colbert of the CBS program “The Late Show” introduced segments of the webcast. After the landing, R&B singer Khalid performed a new song.

When the fuel was spent, Unity continued to coast upward to an altitude of 53.5 miles. The four people in back unbuckled and experienced about four minutes of floating before returning to their seats.

Branson was accompanied in the cabin by Beth Moses, the company’s chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations.

Bennett said that he was busy with tasks during the first part of the flight, and then he heard Moses shouting, “Don’t forget to look out the window.”

He did. “It’s very Zen,” Bennett said of the view of Earth below. “What jumped out at me were the colors and just how far away it looked. It felt like we were just so far up there, and I was just mesmerized.”

Bandla’s role was to evaluate another market Virgin Galactic is targeting: scientists doing research that takes advantage of minutes of microgravity. She conducted an experiment from the University of Florida that looked at how plants react to the changing conditions — particularly the swings in gravity — during the flight, part of research that could aid growing food on future long-duration space missions.

As the space plane reentered the atmosphere, the downward pull of gravity resumed. Unity glided to a landing back at the spaceport.

Michael Moses, president of Virgin Galactic, said the flight appeared to go flawlessly. “The ship looks pristine, no issues whatsoever,” Moses said.

For well over a decade, Branson, the irreverent 70-year-old British billionaire who runs a galaxy of Virgin companies, has repeatedly said he believed that commercial flights would soon begin. So did the 600 or so customers of Virgin Galactic who have paid $200,000 or more for their tickets to space and are still waiting. So did the taxpayers of New Mexico who paid $220 million to build Spaceport America, a futuristic vision in the middle of the desert, in order to attract Branson’s company.

After years and years of unmet promises, Virgin Galactic may begin flying the first paying passengers next year after two more test flights. But with tickets costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, this experience will, for now, remain out of financial reach for most people.

Founding a space exploration company was perhaps an unsurprising step for Branson, who has made a career — and a fortune estimated at $6 billion — building flashy upstart businesses that he promotes with a showman’s flair.

What became his Virgin business empire began with a small record shop in central London in the 1970s before Branson parlayed it into Virgin Records, the home of acts like the Sex Pistols, Peter Gabriel and more. In 1984, he was a co-founder of what became Virgin Atlantic.

The Virgin Group branched out into a mobile phone service, a passenger railway and a line of hotels. Not all have performed flawlessly. Two of his airlines filed for insolvency during the pandemic last year, while few today remember his ventures into soft drinks, cosmetics or lingerie.

The spaceflight company was of a piece with Branson’s penchant for highflying pursuits like sky diving and hot-air ballooning.

Virgin Galactic joined the New York Stock Exchange in 2019 after merging with a publicly traded investment fund, giving it a potent source of new funds to compete with deep-pocket competitors — and publicity, with Branson marking its trading debut at the exchange in one of the company’s flight suits.

The Virgin Group retains a 24% stake in Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic’s space plane is a scaled-up version of SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize as the first reusable crewed spacecraft built by a nongovernmental organization to make it to space twice in two weeks.

Branson initially predicted commercial flights would begin by 2007. But development of the larger craft, SpaceShipTwo, stretched out.

The first SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Enterprise, crashed during a test flight in 2014, killing one of the pilots. Virgin Galactic was then grounded until Unity was completed a year and a half later.

In 2019, Virgin Galactic came close to another catastrophe when a seal on a rear horizontal stabilizer ruptured because a new thermal protection film had been improperly installed.

The mishap was revealed this year in the book “Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut” by Nicholas Schmidle, a staff writer at The New Yorker. The book quotes Todd Ericson, then the vice president for safety and test at Virgin Galactic, saying, “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people.”

Bezos’ flight is to take place about 200 miles to the southeast of Spaceport America in Van Horn, Texas, where his rocket company, Blue Origin, launches its New Shepard rocket and capsule.

Although Blue Origin has yet to fly any people on New Shepard, 15 successful uncrewed tests of the fully automated system convinced the company it would be safe to put Bezos on the first flight with people aboard.

He will be joined by his brother, Mark, and Mary Wallace Funk, an 82-year-old pilot. In the 1960s, she was among a group of women who passed the same rigorous criteria that NASA used for selecting astronauts, but the space agency at the time had no interest in selecting women as astronauts. A fourth unnamed passenger paid $28 million in an auction for one of the seats.

Neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic flights go high enough or fast enough to enter orbit around Earth. Rather, these suborbital flights are more like giant roller coaster rides that allow passengers to float for a few minutes while admiring a view of Earth against the black backdrop of space.

Bezos’ company emphasized the rivalry with Virgin Galactic for space tourism passengers in a tweet Friday. Blue Origin highlighted differences between its New Shepard rocket and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, including the fact that New Shepard flies higher, above the altitude of 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles, that is often regarded as the boundary of space. However, the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration set the boundary at 50 miles.

The company also noted the size of the New Shepard capsule’s windows and called Virgin Galactic’s Unity “a high-altitude plane” in contrast to New Shepard’s rocket.

Bezos on Sunday congratulated Branson and his fellow crew on their flight. “Can’t wait to join the club!” he said in an Instagram post.

At the news conference, Branson said, “It really wasn’t a race.” He added, “We wish Jeff the absolute best.”

Blue Origin has not yet announced a ticket price, and Virgin Galactic’s earlier quoted fare of $250,000 will probably rise. But Sunday, after his trip, Branson announced a sweepstakes that will give away two seats on a future Virgin Galactic flight.

Virgin Galactic is planning two more test flights, including one where scientists from the Italian air force will undertake science experiments, before commencing commercial service.

The era of nonprofessional astronauts regularly heading to orbit may also begin in the coming year. Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire, is essentially chartering a rocket and spacecraft from SpaceX for a three-day trip to orbit that is scheduled for September.

In December, Space Adventures has arranged for a Japanese fashion entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa, and Yozo Hirano, a production assistant, to launch on a Russian Soyuz rocket on a 12-day mission that will go to the International Space Station.

Another company, Axiom Space in Houston, is arranging a separate trip to the space station that will launch as soon as January.

The orbital trips are too expensive for anyone except the superwealthy — Axiom’s three customers are paying $55 million each — while suborbital flights might be affordable to those who are merely well off.

But how many people are willing to spend as much as some houses cost for a few minutes of space travel?

Carissa Christensen, founder and chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology, an aerospace consulting firm, thinks there will be plenty. “Based on previous ticket sales, surveys and interviews,” she said in an email, “we see strong demand signals for multiple hundreds of passengers a year at current prices, with potential for thousands if prices drop significantly.”

Anderson of Space Adventures is less certain.

Two decades ago, his company did sell suborbital flights, including a ticket to Funk, who goes by Wally. “Wally Funk was one of our first customers,” Anderson said. “That would have been, like, 1998.”

The ticket price then was $98,000.

At one point, about 200 people signed up, but none of the suborbital rocket companies was able to get their promised spacecraft close to flight. Space Adventures returned the money to Funk and the others.

Now this unproven suborbital market has whittled down to a battle of billionaires — Branson and Bezos.

“If anybody can make money and make the market work for suborbital, it’s Branson and Bezos,” Anderson said. “They have the reach and the cachet.”