Richard Branson Beats Jeff Bezos In Race To Space

Richard Branson has won the foot race among billionaires to blast off into space, Cynthia Littleton reported for Variety.

Branson and a few of five others briefly achieved weightlessness on Sunday after his Virgin Galactic Unity 22 craft took off from the Spaceport America facility in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

The British billionaire and a crew of five others departed around 7:40 a.m. PT from the Spaceport America facility in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The plane touched down again in the New Mexico desert about an hour later, after achieving speeds of more the three times the speed of sound and vaulting up more than 282,000 feet above Earth.

The Virgin Galactic live stream was glitchy at times but did offer grainy pictures of Branson and others floating around the Unity 22 capsule. Branson called it “the trip of a lifetime” and praised all those who put in “hard, hard work” to make it happen.

Branson’s flight comes about a week before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a scheduled July 20 trip through his Blue Origin exploration venture. And Tesla chief Elon Musk is behind space tourism venture SpaceX.

The Unity 22 craft took off with the boost of a traditional jet plane dubbed “Mothership Eve.” Unity 22 was tethered to the jet until it reached about 50,000 feet.

At that point Unity 22 detached from the mothership and headed further up into the atmosphere — peaking at about 282,000 feet. The craft did not totally leave Earth’s orbit but Branson and crew members were able to achieve the feeling of weightlessness as they shot up far enough to escape Earth’s gravitational pull.

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