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 designated space in June with two pilots 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 on July 20 with a rocket from his company Blue Origin. It’s unclear if Virgin Galactic Bezos will now steal the show. The rumor mill is simmering: Branson allegedly wants to outrun Bezos and blast off into space July 4 – 16 days in advance.
The third billionaire to also cry is Tesla CEO 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’s flights don’t come quite as well as Bezos’ 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.
