Billionaires’ race: Branson wants to go to space before Bezos | free press

Mojave (AP) – British billionaire Richard Branson wants to travel to space on July 11 with the help of his space company Virgin Galactic. The company announced the date of the planned “Unit 22” mission.

In addition to the two pilots, four passengers, including Branson, are said to have flown in the space capsule. If the start date remains on July 11, Branson will have nine days before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos makes this trip.

And the Blue Origin space company from Bezos had already announced in May a manned flight with a “New Shepard” rocket on July 20. The richest person in the world wants to take his brother and an 82-year-old former American pilot on their first space flight.

In May, Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity aircraft completed a manned space test flight with two pilots. The capsule was launched aboard a carrier aircraft from the commercial spaceport of Spaceport America in the US state of New Mexico. The mother ship “VSS Unity” was shot down at an altitude of almost 14 kilometers. Then the space capsule accelerated with its rocket engine and continued the journey.