It was SpaceShipTwo’s fourth trip to the edge of space since 2018, and Virgin Galactic, the company Branson founded in 2004, says it will soon start flying paying customers regularly on similar jaunts, opening a new era in human space exploration.
Several companies in the growing commercial space industry, including Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, have developed spacecraft designed to allow private citizens, and not just NASA trained military fighter pilots and scientists, to earn the title of “astronaut.” (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Virgin Galactic seemed intent on making it clear that this was not a traditional NASA launch. Instead of a stoic countdown, there was a party-like atmosphere along the tarmac, a scene as much a spectacle as a space launch that even included a musical guest, Khalid, who debuted a new song during a performance here. The company’s live broadcast of the flight was hosted by comedian and late-night host Stephen Colbert, and Musk was on hand to watch Branson and the crew take off.
Unlike traditional rockets that launch vertically, Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo Unity takes off tethered to the belly of a mother ship. On Sunday, the mother ship, known as WhiteKnightTwo, lifted off from the tarmac here shortly after 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, delayed by about 90 minutes because high winds overnight had kept the ground crew from rolling it out of the hangar. The spaceship was released at about 11:25 a.m. Eastern time, the pilots ignited the engine and the spacecraft shot almost straight up as it thundered toward space.
The flight reached its apogee at 282,000 feet — 53.41 miles — where the passengers were able to unstrap and experience weightlessness. The spacecraft then fell back to earth and a landing at 11:39 Eastern time.
On board were pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, both of whom had flown to space on previous flights. Joining Branson in the crew compartment were Sirisha Bandla, Virgin Galactic’s vice president of government affairs, Colin Bennett, the company’s lead operations engineer, and Beth Moses, its chief astronaut instructor. Moses, who is married to Mike Moses, the company’s president, flew on Virgin Galactic’s second spaceflight mission, in 2019.
Branson had originally been scheduled to fly aboard a flight scheduled for later this summer or early fall. But after the company successfully made it to space in May, he grew impatient.
“I’ve been itching to go, and they said they wanted somebody to properly test the astronaut experience,” Branson said in a recent interview with The Post. “And I was damned if I was going to let anyone take that seat.”
In a press conference after the flight, he said he wasn’t nervous about the trip. “We have nearly 1,000 of the best engineers in the world” who pored over every inch of the spacecraft, he said. His only concern, he said, was the possibility of a delay. "The only thing I was worried about was some tiny little something that would get in the way, something that would stop us from getting into space.”
He called the experience “just magical…. I’m just taking it all in." And added that, “having flown to space, I can see more clearly how Virgin Galactic is the spaceline for Earth.”
By moving up his flight, he was able to beat Bezos to space by nine days. Bezos, who recently stepped down as Amazon’s CEO, is scheduled to fly on his company’s suborbital New Shepard capsule on July 20.
Branson has repeatedly denied that he was in a race with Bezos and said in the interview that it was just “an incredible, wonderful coincidence that we’re going up in the same month.”
But when asked about a rivalry with Bezos on CNBC, he couldn’t help himself, saying, “Jeff who?”
Branson’s antics elicited a strong response from Bezos’s Blue Origin. Bob Smith, Blue Origin’s CEO, issued a statement last week wishing Branson well but also pointing out that Virgin Galactic is “not flying above the Kármán line, and it’s a very different experience.” The Kármán line, at 100 km or 62 miles, is an internationally recognized threshold for where space begins. Virgin Galactic flies to just over 50 miles, the altitude at which the Federal Aviation Administration will award crew members astronaut wings.
On Saturday, however, Bezos wished Branson luck in a post on Instagram. “Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow,” Bezos wrote. “Best of luck!”
Branson would now be eligible for his wings, fulfilling a dream he has had since he founded Virgin Galactic, lured by the romance of space travel and the possibility of commercializing an endeavor that had been monopolized by governments.
One of the first major steps on that path was the 2004 Ansari X Prize, a $10 million competition to put a commercial vehicle into space for the first time. Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft had funded an effort, led by Burt Rutan, the legendary aircraft designer, to build what was called SpaceShipOne. Branson fell in love with the ship, purchased the rights to the technology and was able to slap a Virgin logo on the spacecraft as it won the prize.
Watching the spacecraft take off, Branson turned to Allen and said, according to Allen’s memoir, “Paul, isn’t this better than the best sex you ever had?”
Branson then turned his attention to creating the “world’s first commercial spaceline” and vowed that within a matter of years passengers would soon be flying to space on a regular basis.
Virgin Galactic set off to build SpaceShipTwo, which would be far larger and more powerful vehicle than its predecessor. But the program quickly ran into technical problems. And in 2014, it suffered an accident midflight that killed one of the pilots, Michael Alsbury, and severely injured the other, Peter Siebold, who parachuted to the ground. Branson considered giving up on his quest, but ultimately decided that the risk was worth it and carried on, vowing to learn from the accident and build a safer and more robust spaceship.
The company finally made it to space in December 2018, and again a few weeks later, in early 2019. It then moved its operations from Mojave, Calif., to New Mexico’s Spaceport America, the gleaming $220 million facility funded by taxpayers. In 2019, the company announced it would go public through a merger with a New York investment firm and hired a new CEO and leadership team.
Then, in May, it reached space for the third time in a flight with two pilots, and, after consulting with the company’s engineers, Branson decided that he would be on the next flight.
The flight comes amid a flurry of spaceflight activity that taken together amounts to a renaissance for human exploration.
Just over a year ago, no one had flown to space from U.S. soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, a long, ignominious drought that ended when Elon Musk’s SpaceX flew a pair of NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, in a test flight to the International Space Station.
Since then, SpaceX has flown two more human spaceflight missions. Boeing, which is also under contract from NASA to transport the agency’s astronauts to and from the station, hopes to fly people in the months to come.
SpaceX plans to fly a mission dubbed Inspiration4 in September. Financed by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, a group of four civilians would spend three days or so orbiting the Earth in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Axiom Space, a firm based in Houston, is arranging trips for very wealthy groups of people to spend a week on the space station. A voyage that costs some $55 million.
In addition to the flight on July 20, Bezos’s Blue Origin has two more flights planned for this year and more than half a dozen next year.
In all, that would culminate to an era of spaceflight like the barnstormers in the early days of aviation. But whether it is successful depends on whether the industry can continue to fly people reliably and safely.
After the flight, Branson was greeted by his three-year-old granddaughter, who said, “Papa gone to the moon. Papa gone to the moon.”
Branson let it slide. “I’m not going to disillusion her,” he said.
Richard Branson revels in a postflight ceremony
“Sir Richard Branson, astronaut.”
With those words, Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, pinned astronaut wings to Richard Branson’s flight suit Sunday shortly after Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo landed safely back at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Speaking to the crowd, Branson said, “the whole thing was just magical…. I’m just taking it all in.”
He said his goal when he founded the company in 2004 was to “turn the dream of space travel into a reality for my grandchildren” and for future generations. And he added that “having flown to space I can see more clearly how Virgin Galactic is the spaceline for Earth.”
Richard Branson’s other space company
Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s space tourism venture, may get most of the attention, but he has another company — Virgin Orbit — that has steadily been making progress and is part of a movement to launch constellations of small satellites to orbit.
Virgin Orbit hopes to be a disruptive force in the launch market by offering a small, 70-foot long, two-stage rocket suited to take advantage of satellite technology that is drastically shrinking in size and lowering costs. Unlike traditional rockets that blast off vertically from launchpads, Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket is air launched — carried aloft by a Boeing 747, then released midair to fires its engine and shoot into orbit.
The rocket is able to hoist payloads of a few hundred pounds, which could carry satellites that would range in size from a big refrigerator to a toaster oven, the company has said.
So far, it has had two successful launches, including one last month, when it delivered seven customer satellites to their intended orbit. In all, the company has launched 17, and is “looking forward to growing that number tremendously as we push to ramp up our flight cadence in the coming months,” Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit’s CEO, said in a statement.
The company is pursuing a number of customers, but one in particular, the Pentagon, has been paying particularly close attention. The ability to quickly put up a satellite is a capability U.S. national security agencies have long sought after, and being able to use a 747 that only needs a runway to take off is particularly attractive, officials have said.
After Virgin Orbit’s first launch, Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, the Space Force’s chief of space operations, wrote on Twitter: “Congratulations to the Virgin Orbit Team!”
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo has landed back on the runway at Spaceport America
SpaceShipTwo Unity has touched down on the runway at Spaceport America just about 15 minutes after it was released from its mothership and thundered to the edge of space, completing a daring flight that Richard Branson has dreamed of for years.
A crowd gathered along the tarmac cheered when they saw the shiny, white spaceplane come back after what appears to be a successful mission. In addition to Branson, Virgin Galactic employees Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett and Beth Moses were on board the test flight, which was piloted by Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci.
The company hopes the mission will pave the way for future flights of paying customers. It has some 600 people who have put down significant deposits and are waiting to fly. It also is expected to soon reopen sales for tickets, which had cost $250,000 but are now expected to be more expensive, perhaps as much as $500,000.
SpaceShipTwo has reached the edge of space
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity spaceplane reached the edge of space, flying to an altitude of more than 50 miles. The vehicle is carrying Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and three employees and has two pilots at the controls. After reaching its apogee, or high point, it reoriented itself and is falling back toward Earth, gliding to a runway landing.
SpaceShipTwo Unity has been released
SpaceShipTwo Unity has been released from its mothership.
If all goes according to plan, it should fly past 50 miles high, then glide back to Earth for a landing on the runway at Spaceport America. Total flight time, from release to landing, is estimated to be 15 minutes.
How Virgin Galactic was founded nearly two decades ago
In 2004, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, won the Ansari X Prize, by sending the first commercially developed spacecraft past what is known as the Kármán line, an internationally recognized threshold that says space begins at 100 kilometers, about 62 miles, above the Earth’s surface.
At the time, Richard Branson was fascinated with the idea of private space travel and was thinking of starting a space company of his own. And when he saw SpaceShipOne, the vehicle that legendary aviation designer Burt Rutan developed for Allen, he was smitten.
Allen was growing nervous about the dangers of human spaceflight and agreed to sell Branson the rights to the technology. Branson quickly slapped a Virgin logo on the spacecraft and set out to make it more robust. SpaceShipOne, which hangs in the National Air and Space Museum, was a relatively small and nimble spaceplane that flew with a single pilot each time it went to space.
But Branson had something bigger and more ambitious in mind — creating the world’s first “commercial spaceline,” as he called it. And Virgin Galactic set out to build a larger craft capable of flying six passengers with two pilots. For now, however, the company is flying just four people in addition to the pilots. And it flies past 50 miles, not 62.
SpaceShipTwo, as it is called, has reached that 50-mile altitude three times before today’s flight, allowing Branson to fly and fulfill the dream he had nearly 20 years ago.
The billionaire space race between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos grows bitter
Jeff Bezos was supposed to go to space first.
His company Blue Origin announced that he would join the company’s first human spaceflight mission, scheduled for July 20. The date was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. And Bezos invited his brother, Mark, to join him. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Branson was not about to be outdone, however. While he was initially scheduled to go on a later flight, he jumped ahead and decided to join the flight scheduled to fly Sunday, which is nine days before Bezos’ flight. He has denied that he and Bezos are in a race, telling The Post recently that it was “just an incredible, wonderful coincidence that we’re going up in the same month.”
But when asked about the rivalry on CNBC, Branson couldn’t help himself and said, “Jeff who?”
Blue Origin, normally quiet and secretive, has punched back, releasing a chart comparing a flight in its New Shepard capsule to the Virgin Galactic experience. In it, Blue Origin points out that its capsule flies above the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary for space at 100 kilometers or around 62 miles high. Virgin Galactic, by contrast, flies just above 50 miles, an altitude at which the Federal Aviation Administration issues astronaut wings for crew members.
Blue Origin also pointed out that its windows are bigger, that it launches with a more traditional rocket and capsule instead of an air-launch via a spaceplane and has an emergency escape system. It also charges that Virgin Galactic’s rocket engine is worse for the environment.
Nicola Pecile, a test pilot for Virgin Galactic,on Twitter called the dispute about which altitude is more worthy “so childish that it is getting really embarrassing to watch.” He noted that flying above 100,000 feet, about 18 miles, “is already so complicated that anyone doing so should deserve a special recognition.”
He added that if there had ever been a competition between the two companies, it ended in December 2018 when Virgin Galactic first flew to space. He added that Blue Origin “has flown only mannequins so far.”
The tweets were later deleted.
Where does outer space begin?
There is no line in the upper reaches of the atmosphere indicating where space begins. It’s not like the ocean or a river bank where on one side you are dry and on the other wet. And there is no precise definition of where space officially begins in international law.
The atmosphere gradually gets less and less dense, gravity’s pull eventually weakens, and the debate over where space begins has churned for decades.
It’s getting another look now as a pair of companies, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin compete to fly paying customers to the edge of space and back on suborbital trajectories. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Blue Origin touts that it flies past the Karman line, named for Theodore Von Karman, a Hungarian-American engineer and scientist who studied aeronautics and astronautics. That boundary is at 100 kilometers, or 62 miles.
Blue Origin chose that altitude, Bezos has said, “because we didn’t want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you’re an astronaut or not.”
Blue Origin likes to point out that Virgin Galactic doesn’t quite reach that altitude, even though that was its original intent. But as its spacecraft got heavier, Virgin Galactic decided it would fly four passengers, not six, as originally intended, and it would fly only past 50 miles, instead of 62.
But the Federal Aviation Administration recognizes 50 miles high as space and awards astronaut wings to people who’ve reached that altitude. That includes Virgin Galactic’s pilots, as well as the pilots from the Air Force and NASA who flew the X-15 jet to that altitude during the 1950s.
The 50-mile, 80-kilometer threshold qualifies as space for Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astrophysicist, as well. In a paper, he argued that “practical evidence suggests that the 80 km line is a reasonable boundary.”
Satellites can survive for days and weeks in orbit at that altitude. But once the low point of the orbit drops below that threshold a satellite would fall back into the atmosphere and burn up. “The satellite does not survive more than one orbit,” he wrote.
SpaceShipTwo, carried by a mothership, has lifted off
SpaceShipTwo Unity has taken off. The spaceplane, carrying Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, and three company employees, Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett and Beth Moses, lifted off from a runway here in a mission that they hope will take them to the edge of space.
The spaceplane is tethered to the belly of a mother ship, which will “air launch” the vehicle to space.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity: not the traditional way to launch into space
Since the dawn of the Space Age, astronauts made it to the stars by strapping into a spacecraft sitting on top of — or, in the case of the space shuttle — beside massive rocket boosters that propelled them out of the atmosphere.
Virgin Galactic takes a different approach. Instead of launching vertically from a pad, it air-launches its vehicle. The spacecraft, known as SpaceShipTwo Unity, is tethered to the belly of a twin fuselage airplane that carries it aloft to about 45,000 feet. There, the spaceship is released, the pilots fire its engines and steer it on an almost perfectly vertical trajectory into the sky.
To reorient itself for reentry, the spacecraft has what is known as a “feather” — the wings of the spacecraft essentially fold up and, as the company says on its website, “provides stability during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.”
“During this phase of spaceflight the vehicle acts like a shuttlecock or birdie, orienting the ship to the proper re-entry attitude,” Virgin Galactic says. “This orientation creates high drag, which slows SpaceShipTwo down quickly while high in the atmosphere. This also allows the thermal loads generated from re-entering the atmosphere to spread evenly over the surface area of the vehicle rather than concentrating on a few small points.”
Once back into the atmosphere, the wings are lowered back into position, and the pilots glide the spaceplane for a touchdown on the runway.
SpaceShipTwo is not the only vehicle to be air-launched from a mother ship to an altitude of more than 50 miles. The X-15, operated by the U.S. Air Force and NASA, flew during test flights in the 1960s. But it didn’t have a cabin as modern as SpaceShipTwo, with plenty of windows for Earth gazing.
Meet the crew flying Virgin Galactic today
Richard Branson will be on board. That everyone knows. But the rest of the crew is an interesting mix of Virgin Galactic employees, with an array of backgrounds and experiences.
Dave Mackay, the chief pilot, is from Scotland and has flown to space twice previously. He served in the Royal Air Force for 16 years and has flown 140 different types of aircraft. After the military, he flew for Virgin Atlantic, Branson’s commercial airline, and then joined Virgin Galactic.
Michael “Sooch” Masucci is the flight’s co-pilot. He’s a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew on Virgin Galactic’s second spaceflight mission.
In the cabin with Branson will be Beth Moses, whose Virgin Galactic job is chief astronaut instructor. She flew with Masucci on the February 2019 flight. In an interview with The Post after her flight, she said, “It blows your mind. We flew on a perfectly clear day. A lot of snow on the mountain tops. Earth was wearing her diamonds that day.”
When the company starts flying paying customers, Moses’ job will be to prepare them for the experience. She is married to Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic’s president.
Sirisha Bandla, Virgin Galactic’s vice president of government affairs and research operations, is a graduate of Purdue University who previously worked at the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an association that promotes the commercial space industry. While flying, she said she would be assessing what it would be like for researchers and scientists to perform their experiments in space.
“This is an incredible opportunity to get people from different backgrounds, different geographies, different communities into space,” she said in a video on Twitter.
The sixth person aboard the flight will be Colin Bennett, Virgin Galactic’s lead operations engineer. His task is to evaluate procedures in the crew cabin during the spaceplane’s powered ascent through the atmosphere as well as when the crew is in a weightless environment.
Richard Branson, showman and daredevil, hopes to use his spaceflight to drive ticket sales
Human spaceflight is an inherently risky endeavor. Astronauts, like soldiers going into combat, know — or should — that they are putting their lives on the line.
“Anyone who has lived with large rocket engines understands that their awesome power is produced by machinery churning away at very high temperatures, pressures and velocities,” Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut wrote in a Washington Post op-ed days after space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, killing all seven on board.
Despite the risks, he wrote that “we tend to pooh-pooh danger, and if you go into the VIP stands before a space launch there is a carefree, holiday atmosphere, like being at the company picnic. Ride one of the beasts and you get a different perspective.”
The spaceplane that Richard Branson is set to fly is nothing like the beast Collins flew with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The Saturn V moon rocket was far more powerful than the spaceplane that will barely get Branson to the edge of space. But it is dangerous nonetheless, despite the festive atmosphere Branson is building at Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic’s facility in the New Mexico desert.
Stephen Colbert, the late-night TV show host and space fan, is anchoring Virgin Galactic’s live broadcast of the flight. The musician Khalid will be at Spaceport America, and will release his new single “New Normal” after the launch. Celebrity FORs (Friends of Richard) are expected to be on hand as well, ready to party and celebrate a triumph. Elon Musk is there.
Branson, the showman CEO who has turned death-defying exploits into a form of self-promotion and marketing, plans to use his flight to launch Virgin Galactic’s ticket sales. After being dormant for some time, the company plans to reopen sales — with prices that could be an estimated $500,000.
That is, as long as Sunday’s flight is completed safely.
The crew has arrived at Spaceport America
The crew for Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight has arrived at Spaceport America ahead of the flight. In a Twitter post, Richard Branson can be seen cycling up to the facility and being greeted by his fellow crew mates, who are already in their spacesuits.
“You’re late, come on, get suited up,” says Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor. They are expected to board SpaceShipTwoUnity a little before 10 a.m. Eastern time.
Elon Musk is at Spaceport America to cheer on Richard Branson
Richard Branson has added a photo of himself with a barefoot Elon Musk to his Twitter feed.
“Big day ahead. Great to start the morning with a friend. Feeling good, feeling excited, feeling ready,” he said in the accompanying text.
Branson is scheduled to fly to space on Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft later Sunday morning.
Branson responded by saying, “Thanks for being so typically supportive and such a good friend, Elon. Great to be opening up space for all — safe travels and see you at Spaceport America!”
“Godspeed!” Musk tweeted Sunday.
Jeff Bezos, another of the billionaire “space barons,” also said he hoped Branson had a good launch, writing on Instagram: “Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow. Best of luck!” Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, is scheduled to fly to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard space capsule July 20 and is not expected to be present to witness Branson’s trip.
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