Richard Branson’s space flight delayed by the weather

After 17 years of delay and disappointment, and after burning more than $ 1 billion in his personal fortune, Sir Richard Branson appeared on Sunday just minutes after realizing his dream of becoming an astronaut. up.

The 70-year-old Virgin founder, and five other crew members, were forced to wait for the VSS Unity spacecraft to leave its hangar at Spaceport America, delaying the flight by approximately 90 minutes.

Virgin Galactic said they now had to leave the ground at 8:30 a.m. local time, suspended under a specially designed carrier plane. VSS Unity will be taken to an altitude of 50,000 feet, where it will be released and fire its rocket engine, propelling it up three times the speed of sound to reach the edge of space.

The flight arrives nine days before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrives even higher on a rocket built by his private space company, Blue origin.

The personal escapades of billionaires end a race to prove that their rocket companies are finally safe for commercial operations, opening up suborbital space as a tourist destination.

Branson had been scheduled to join a later Virgin Galactic test flight, but Sunday’s trip was announced in a hurry two weeks ago, when it looked like Bezos would be defeated at zero gravity.

In a sign of the marketing war for space tourists expected, Blue Origin poured cold water on Branson’s feat even before he took to the skies on Sunday. He noted that the Virgin Galactic space plane does not reach the Karman line, the point, 100 km above the Earth, which marks the internationally recognized boundary of outer space.

Criticism forced Branson to defend himself in the days leading up to his escape. He noted that the United States considers that the space would start at an altitude of 80 km and stated that the passengers of his company would spend the same four minutes in zero gravity as those of Blue Origin.

Over the weekend, the Bezos camp also dismissed the VSS Unity as a “high-altitude aircraft” and highlighted alleged safety deficiencies, including the lack of an emergency escape system and the fact that he has only surpassed 80 km three times before.

But in New Mexico, the moment belonged to Branson. Hundreds of press, company employees and guests gathered in the dark before dawn to witness his release, a testament to his skills as a master showman who has long used his appetite to take personal risks. to polish the Virgin brand.

Virgin Galactic moved to the spaceport two years ago, but until Sunday it had only held one test flight since then. He had been delayed for years by a 2014 crash when one of his spacecraft crashed and killed a test pilot. A previous crash during a ground rocket test killed three employees who had been hired to build the Virgin Galactic spacecraft.

Sunday’s flight – and Branson’s part in it – is apparently part of the series of tests Virgin Galactic has to do before it can fully open up to commercial operations. The Virgin founder was said to be about to help assess whether the company had met its “customer and booth experience goals.”

Two more test flights are planned before full commercial operations begin.