with Richard Branson Will try to be the first billionaire to leave Earth As the super-rich space race heats up.
Virgin boss plans to beat rival billionaire Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk To the final boundary on Sunday.
In recent years, space tourism has become a billionaire obsession, and Musk even expressed his intentions for the company. Space Exploration Technology Corporation Build spacecraft that can help humans colonize Mars.
Let’s take a look at three competitors:
Sir Richard was the first to move towards commercial space flight, he founded Virgin Galactic In 2004, it was originally intended to launch a private spacecraft before 2009, and then the delay disrupted his plan.
Now, he hopes to fly on the VSS Unity spacecraft on July 11 and become the first billionaire to enter space-this is Virgin Galactic’s first full flight to the edge of space.
Previously, Virgin Galactic suffered a series of setbacks, including the death of a pilot during a test flight on the VSS Enterprise, which broke up and crashed in the Mojave Desert in October 2014.
Sunday’s flight will be Virgin Galactic’s 22nd launch.
Sir Richard announced the flight shortly after Mr. Bezos announced his plan to launch on June 20, but denied that he tried to defeat his fellow billionaire.
Unity will have two pilots and four mission experts, including Sir Richard. The aircraft will be carried by the twin-fuselage carrier jet VMS Eve to 50,000 feet, and then propel itself upwards, and passengers will experience zero gravity.
Sir Richard started with the magazine “Student” he founded in 1968 and founded a mail-order record company, which prompted him to found Virgin Records, his first large-scale enterprise, and thus started his business.
He used the success of Virgin Records to promote the Virgin brand to multiple industries, including airlines, gyms, publishing and a ill-fated Coke brand.
Sir Richard now has a net worth of 4 billion pounds.
Mr. Bezos has always had an eye on space travel.
His company, Blue Origin, was founded in 2000, and he expressed his interest in humans leaving the Earth in an interview with the Miami Herald in 1982.
Blue Origin plans to launch a reusable New Shepard rocket on July 20, carrying Mr. Bezos, his brother Mark, a mysterious passenger who paid £20 million at an auction, and a passenger in 1961 Wally Fink, a trained female astronaut who has never been to space.
If the flight is successful, she will become the oldest person to reach space.
New Shepard has a traditional launch method that involves boosting the rocket to take off vertically and then separating from the space capsule at a suborbital altitude.
Unlike the spacecraft of Mr. Bezos’ rivals, the rocket has no crew and is autonomous.
He is the founder and former CEO of Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer.
Before getting into consumer products in 1998, he founded Amazon as an online bookstore. He is also the owner of Blue Origin and the Washington Post.
His net worth is currently 154 billion pounds.
The South African boss of Tesla is known for his dedication to promoting space travel.
So far, his biggest contribution is the creation of reusable booster rockets through SpaceX.
Musk was the first to announce a completely private space flight in February and will try to launch in the fall.
Space tourism is a secondary issue for SpaceX. SpaceX mainly hopes to colonize Mars. Mr. Musk said he wants to die on this red planet.
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will carry a four-person crew led by Jason Isaacman, the founder of online payment company Shift4 Payments.
The Dragon spacecraft will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, which SpaceX has been using for launches since 2017.
Musk is best known as the eccentric CEO of electric car company Tesla, but he made a fortune by creating an online payment service PayPal.
He has become a major supporter of cryptocurrency and even accepted Bitcoin as a payment for Tesla cars earlier this year.
His net worth is 129 billion pounds.
