This said billionaire Branson from space 1:05
(CNN Business) -
Richard Branson became the first person to travel into space aboard an aircraft he helped finance.
The supersonic space plane developed by his company, Virgin Galactic, roared into the sky over New Mexico early Sunday morning, carrying Branson and three crewmates.
Branson, along with Virgin Galactic employees Beth Moses, Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla and pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, boarded the SpaceShipTwo, a winged aircraft with a single rocket engine that the company has spent nearly two decades developing, before dawn.
Enclosed below its massive twin-fuselage mothership, dubbed the WhiteKnightTwo, the vehicle soared into the skies at 8:30 a.m. local time and soared about 15,240 meters into the air.
Minute by minute: Richard Branson goes into space
Just after 9:15 a.m., the SpaceShipTwo detached from its mothership and fell momentarily before its engine came to life and the vehicle launched itself upward. On board, passengers experienced up to three G's of force from the burst of extreme acceleration and watched the blue sky fade into the star-speckled darkness of outer space.
At the top of the flight path, more than 80 kilometers high, the vehicle was suspended in weightlessness for a few minutes, allowing passengers to enjoy panoramic views of Earth and space as the SpaceShipTwo rotated on its belly.
He then deployed his feather system, which curved the plane's wings upward, mimicking the shape of a badminton shuttlecock, to turn the spacecraft clockwise as it flew back into Earth's thick atmosphere and glided back to a landing strip.
This is how Richard Branson took off in the Virgin Galactic 1:13 spacecraft
This flight marked only the fourth test flight of the vehicle that reached the edge of space.
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SpaceShipTwo's surrounding takeoff was, in typical Branson fashion, a high-production party with friends, family, employees, and a few VIPs in attendance.
Earlier Sunday, Branson tweeted a photo of himself and Elon Musk barefoot hanging out.
Grammy-nominated artist Khalid performed a previously unreleased song on an outdoor stage.
The dangers of a space trip like Branson 2:13
What does this mean
Branson's flight, which occurred just nine days before Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos launches into suborbital space aboard his own company's spacecraft, is a historic moment for the commercial space industry. The emerging sector has for years tried to make suborbital space tourism (a relatively simple round-trip flight, rather than orbiting the Earth for longer periods) a viable business with the goal of allowing thousands of people to experience the adrenaline rush. and the panoramic views of our home planet that these flights can offer.
Branson and Bezos are poised to become direct competitors in this sector, each of whom offers wealthy customers tickets for short trips to the upper atmosphere aboard rocket-powered supersonic spacecraft.
Virgin Galactic plans to conduct just one more test flight before starting to fly paying customers.
More than 600 people have booked tickets priced from $ 200,000 to $ 250,000 so far.
The company is expected to reopen ticket sales soon, albeit at a higher price.
The Branson flight also helps reinforce Virgin Galactic's reputation as "the world's first commercial space line."
Here's how the company advertised itself by signing up those hundreds of willing customers who have waited through development delays - and a tragic mishap - for the opportunity to ride aboard the SpaceShipTwo.
But it is not yet clear whether Virgin Galactic will actually be the "first" commercially operational suborbital space company.
Bezos' space company Blue Origin seemed poised to put its founder into space before Branson, until Virgin Galactic made the surprise announcement earlier this month that it would be on the next test flight, a departure from the previous ones. previous company plans.
Bezos' flight, scheduled for July 20, could start the company's commercial operations before then, and one of his fellow travelers on the flight is a paying customer, who won a ticket through a charity auction. for the price of 28 million dollars.
However, the company has not yet started selling tickets to the public, nor has it set a specific date on when it plans to do so.
Neither company is expected to offer tickets that are affordable for the average American.
How Virgin Galactic got here
Virgin Galactic moved into its New Mexico facility in May 2019 after years of delay.
The dazzling building, called Spaceport America, was paid for with more than $ 200 million mostly taxpayer money, and it had been waiting nearly a decade for Virgin Galactic to move in and open its doors.
The company renovated the building to include a lounge and other amenities that ticket holders will be able to use before their short trip to the edge of space.
Credit: PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images
Virgin Galactic's development program suffered a series of setbacks, including a catastrophic accident during a test flight in 2014 that left a co-pilot dead and the pilot seriously injured after the SpaceShipTwo boom system prematurely deployed, wrecking the spacecraft. space.
The company has since parted ways with its manufacturing partner and said it worked to improve the SpaceShipTwo with additional automated safeguards.
Branson said ahead of Sunday's test flight that he was eager to join the pilots and test engineers who have already flown SpaceShipTwo because he felt it demonstrated a crucial vote of confidence.
"You have to remember that Virgin Galactic has people on every space flight ... The fact that he is willing to fly with those people shows confidence," Branson told CNN Business' Rachel Crane earlier this month.
"I think the least the founder of the company can do is go up and fly with his people."
Richard Branson Virgin Galactic