Story at a glance
- Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson is set to leave Earth’s atmosphere July 11 on the company’s next test flight.
- The feat would put him in space ahead of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by nine days.
- Branson will be among a six person crew on the VSS Unity set to take off July 11 from New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson is set to leave Earth’s atmosphere July 11 on the company’s next test flight — a feat that would put him in space ahead of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by nine days, the company announced Thursday.
“It’s one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; it’s another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality,” Branson said in a press release.
“As part of a remarkable crew of mission specialists, I’m honoured to help validate the journey our future astronauts will undertake and ensure we deliver the unique customer experience people expect from Virgin,” Branson added.
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Rumors of a reported billionaire fueled space race swirled when reports surfaced in June that Branson was on the move to beat Bezos. Virgin Galactic faced an uphill battle at the time before the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company approval to fly customers into space.
Branson will be among a six person crew on the VSS Unity set to take off July 11 from New Mexico, ahead of Bezos’s New Shepard rocket scheduled for departure July 20 from Van Horn, Texas.
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Virgin Galactic announced in the release that the test flight will be livestreamed on the company’s website and various social media platforms beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern on the day of the flight.
Jeff and Mark Bezos will reportedly be joined by four others on their 11 minute flight. Bezos’s company Blue Origin announced yesterday that Wally Funk, who graduated from the 1960s Women in Space program, will join the flight. Another passenger outlasted nearly 7,600 competitors from 159 countries in an online auction for the extra seat with a $28 million bid.
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