On the eve of the flight, Bezos did post tepid encouragement: “Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow.
A Virgin Galactic pilot sent a huffy tweet (later deleted) noting that Blue Origin has so far only flown a mannequin. Bigger windows! Better for the environment! And, most pointedly, it emphasized that Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule clears the Kármán line, which it considers “real” space. Late in the week, Blue Origin released a testy head-to-head comparison between the two systems. (Funk had also been on the Virgin Galactic waiting list.) But Branson scored points when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk decided to show up at the New Mexico spaceport to cheer him on. Blue Origin scored a coup by including 82-year-old Wally Funk, who had been trained as one of the original Mercury astronauts but was unable to join the program because NASA wasn’t sending women to space. The Federal Aviation Administration is more lenient, granting you astronaut wings at 50 miles, which we may as well call the Branson Line.Įver since Branson announced his beat-Bezos timetable, the pair have wished each other well at the same time they frantically traded microaggressions. Whether or not it qualifies as “outer space” depends on whose definition you accept: The Department of Defense won’t consider you an astronaut unless you cross the Kármán line of 100 kilometers, which is around 62 miles. The flight tops off about 55 miles above Earth, just high enough to sample weightlessness.
Once clear of the mothership, Unity’s pilots fire the rockets. When the bound vehicles reach an altitude of around 45,000 feet, Eve drops its cargo. The crew drives up to the ship in SUVs and climbs about six steps on a tiny metal staircase to the hatch. Virgin Galactic uses a technology originally developed by a company owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and built by a firm called Scaled Composites, strapping a rocket-powered vehicle underneath a much larger double-fuselage airplane. That means having the travelers climb seven flights of steps to a capsule sitting on top of a giant rocket booster and literally blasting off to the skies. Bezos’ Blue Origin uses traditional means of sending people to space. Virgin’s literal path to space is unique. Waiting in the wings was Khalid, who had written a song, “New Normal,” to be unveiled upon the end of the ride. The live feed itself was cohosted by Stephen Colbert. As Branson walked to the launch pad, he was surrounded by cheering spectators he paused his fist-bumping stroll to sign some souvenirs offered by little children. The Virgin Galactic founder posted a photo of a welcome observer to the launch-Elon Musk. “Suit up!”Ī longer version of the video showed them signing into a log book, with Branson identifying himself as Astronaut 001. We saw him arriving at the spaceport on a bicycle-pedaled across the Atlantic?-greeting his crewmates, who were already decked out in their custom-designed Under Armour suits. In the hours before the launch, Branson’s Twitter feed, along with those of his colleagues, was stuffed with slick videos intended to portray a hero’s journey. Hundreds are already on the waiting list.īranson is the king of spectacle, so it’s not surprising that the launch had a festival feel to it. Fifteen minutes later, Branson and his crew were back on Earth, ready to talk about how Virgin Galactic would be offering an identical experience to anyone willing to pay $250,000 or so. Branson was at the edge of space, around 80 kilometers up. Then fire belched from the vehicle, and in just under two minutes, it reached altitude. Branson awaited the ignition of the rocket engine with a smile frozen on his face.
Branson and five of his colleagues-two pilots, three other mission specialists-were on board. At 9:25 am MT, about 45 minutes after taking off from the spaceport at the delayed time, the spaceship component of the duo, Unity, was ready to be freed from Eve. The delay meant that liftoff for today’s planned flight, which would send a crew on Unity 50 miles above Earth, would be pushed back 90 minutes.īut no matter-Richard Branson still had plenty of time to beat Jeff Bezos into outer space.Īnd he did it. The storm was sufficiently fierce to postpone Virgin Galactic’s planned rollout of its twin airships, mothership Eve and a space vehicle called VSS Unity, from their hangar. The sky over the Spaceport America in southern New Mexico was afire with lightning last night.
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