The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his
Virgin Galactic space-tourism company reached an altitude of 53.5 miles (86
kilometers) over the New Mexico desert — enough to experience three to four
minutes of weightlessness and witness the curvature of the Earth — and then
glided back home to a runway landing.
“The whole thing, it was just magical,” a jubilant Branson
said on his return aboard the gleaming white space plane, named Unity.
The brief, up-and-down flight — the space plane’s portion
took only about 15 minutes, or about as long as Alan Shepard’s first U.S.
spaceflight in 1961 — was a splashy and unabashedly commercial plug for Virgin
Galactic, which plans to start taking paying customers on joyrides next year.
Branson became the first person to blast off in his own
spaceship, beating Bezos, the richest person on the planet, by nine days. He
also became the second septuagenarian to go into space. Astronaut John Glenn
flew on the shuttle at age 77 in 1998.
Bezos sent his congratulations, adding: “Can’t wait to join
the club!” — though he also took to Twitter a couple of days earlier to
enumerate the ways in which be believes his company’s tourist rides will be
better.
With about 500 people watching, including Branson’s family,
Unity was carried aloft underneath a twin-fuselage aircraft. Then, at an
altitude of about 8 1/2 miles (13 kilometers), Unity detached from the mother
ship and fired its engine, reaching more than Mach 3, or three times the speed
of sound, as it pierced the edge of space.
Spectators cheered, jumped into the air and embraced as the
rocket plane touched down on Earth. Branson pumped his fists as he stepped out
onto the runway and ran toward his family, bear-hugging his wife and children
and scooping up his grandchildren in his arms.
Mike Moses, a top executive at Virgin Galactic, said that
apart from some problems with the transmission of video images from inside the
cabin, the flight was perfect, and the ship looked pristine.
“That was an amazing accomplishment,” former Canadian
astronaut Chris Hadfield, a one-time commander of the International Space
Station, said from the sidelines. “I’m just so delighted at what this open door
is going to lead to now. It’s a great moment.”
Virgin Galactic conducted three previous test flights into
space with crews of just two or three.
The flamboyant, London-born founder of Virgin Atlantic
Airways wasn’t supposed to fly until later this summer. But he assigned himself
to an earlier flight after Bezos announced plans to ride his own rocket into
space from Texas on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon
landing. Branson denied he was trying to outdo Bezos.
Branson’s other chief rival in the space-tourism race among
the world’s richest men, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, came to New Mexico to watch and
congratulated Branson for a “beautiful flight.”
Bezos’ Blue Origin company intends to send tourists past the
so-called Karman line 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, which is
recognized by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold
of space.
But NASA, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration
and some astrophysicists consider the boundary between the atmosphere and space
to begin 50 miles (80 kilometers) up.
The risks to Branson and his crew were underscored in 2007,
when a rocket motor test in California’s Mojave Desert left three workers dead,
and in 2014, when a Virgin Galactic rocket plane broke apart during a test
flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.
Ever the showman, Branson insisted on a global livestream of
the Sunday morning flight and invited celebrities and former space station
astronauts to the company’s Spaceport America base in New Mexico. R&B
singer Khalid performed his new single “New Normal” — a nod to the dawning of
space tourism — while CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert served as master of
ceremonies.
Before climbing aboard, Branson, who has kite-surfed the
English Channel and attempted to circle the world in a hot-air balloon, signed
the astronaut log book and wisecracked: “The name’s Branson. Sir Richard
Branson. Astronaut Double-oh-one. License to thrill.”
But asked afterward whether he is planning any more
adventures, Branson said he will “definitely give it a rest for the time being”
because “I’m not sure it would be fair to put my family through another one.”
He said he thinks he holds the record for being pulled out of the sea five
times by helicopter.
Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations from
would-be space tourists, with tickets initially costing $250,000 apiece. And
upon his return to Earth, Branson announced a sweepstakes drawing for two seats
on a Virgin Galactic jaunt. Blue Origin is waiting for Bezos’ flight before
announcing its ticket prices.
Kerianne Flynn, who signed up in 2011 to fly with Virgin
Galactic, had butterflies ahead of the launch Sunday.
“I think there’s going to be nothing like going up there and
looking back down on the Earth, which is what I think I’m most excited about,”
she said. She added: “Hopefully the next generations will be able to explore
what’s up there.”
Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX both fly Apollo-style, using
capsules atop rockets, instead of an air-launched, reusable space plane.
SpaceX, which is already launching astronauts to the space
station for NASA and building moon and Mars ships, plans to take tourists on
more than just brief, up-and-down trips. Customers will instead go into orbit
around the Earth for days, with seats costing well into the millions. The
company’s first private flight is set for September.
Musk himself has not committed to going into space anytime
soon.