the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Spaceport America New Mexico, after nearly 17 years of development and over a billion of dollars invested in Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson has achieved his dream and reached space.
Speaking from the spacecraft’s cabin, Branson called the spaceflight the “complete experience of a lifetime.”
“I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, and honestly nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space,” Branson said after landing.
The company’s spacecraft VSS Unity launched above the skies of New Mexico on Sunday, with two pilots guiding the vehicle carrying the billionaire founder and three Virgin Galactic employees. VSS Unity – after being released by a carrier aircraft called VMS Eve above 40,000 feet – fired its rocket engine and accelerated to faster than three times the speed of sound in a climb to the edge of space.
VSS Unity then performed a slow backflip in microgravity, when the Virgin Galactic crew was weightless and floated around the spacecraft cabin. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 86.1 kilometers (53.5 miles, or about 282,000 feet).
The era of Space tourism is born. Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight comes just nine days before billionaire Jeff Bezos is slated to fly on New Shepard, a suborbital rocket built by his company Blue Origin.
The vehicle then returned through the atmosphere in a glide, to land back at the runway of Spaceport America where it took off earlier.
I have to give Branson credit. You wouldn’t catch me up there.