Richard Branson goes to space

Getting Richard Branson to space is a two-step process — and frankly, it's weird.

If you know anything about quirky aerospace visionary Burt Rutan and his early involvement in Virgin Galactic, you'll understand why.

There are no NASA-esque rocket towers or launch pads being used here.

SpaceShipTwo is a winged, rocket-powered spaceplane that takes off from an airport runway, attached beneath the conjoined wings of a mammoth mothership, called WhiteKnightTwo, which is essentially a twin-fuselage airplane. That must sound strange, and that's because it is indeed a very strange looking setup:

The two vehicles fly conjoined up to about 50,000 feet altitude, at which point the spacecraft, with its four occupants inside, drops from its mothership. SpaceShipTwo's single rocket motor will fire up as soon as the spacecraft detaches in order to blast the vehicle up to nearly 300,000 feet in just one minute.

If all goes according to plan, of course. Though Virgin Galactic has successfully sent a crew to the edge of outer space three times, it was forced to abort a test as recently as December of 2020, when the rocket failed to ignite.

Here's an overview of the flight path Virgin Galactic previously shared:

SpaceShipTwo, controlled by two pilots, can house up to eight paying passengers in its cabin, offering them panoramic views of the Earth and the star-speckled expanse of the cosmos through its twelve circular windows.

The SpaceShipTwo that will be used for today's flight is VSS Unity, the only SpaceShipTwo that has previously flown to space.

This is a question a lot of space nerds — and, apparently, Jeff Bezos' team at Blue Origin — care a lot about.

There is no single definition of "outer space." And deciding where space begins is largely an exercise in pinpointing exactly where the Earth's atmosphere becomes less troublesome than the Earth's gravitational pull. But there is no exact altitude where that happens. The atmosphere thins out, but the "vacuum of space" is never really devoid of matter entirely. It's a blurry line.

Where does space begin? Does it begin when you look up, and the sky goes from blue to dark and speckled with stars? What about when you just go so high enough that you float, like you see with astronauts on the space station?

Well astronauts on the space station don't float because they're so high up, it's because they're in orbit. To put it plainly, according to NASA, emphasis ours:

And while Branson and his crew won't be going into orbit, they will be experiencing microgravity, as they freefall from the peak of their journey, very similar to what astronauts experience on the ISS. Except they're not moving at over 17,000 mph like the people on the ISS, so the SpaceShipTwo will come screaming back down to Earth rather than continuously circling the planet.

But when it comes to suborbital — AKA flights that don't drum up enough speed to enter Earth's orbit — Branson and Bezos' space companies are fixated on what altitude they reach.

Branson's flight today is expected to reach more than 50 miles high, which is the altitude the US government considers the beginning of outer space.

Bezos' flight on July 20 will hit more than 62 miles high — also known as the Kármán line — which is the altitude internationally recognized as the boundary.

Exactly which is correct — the US-accepted 50-mile mark or the internationally accepted 62-mile Kármán line — is widely debated and mostly arbitrary.

But when we say the international community "recognizes" or "accepts" the 62-mile Kármán line as the edge of space, we're mostly talking about one organization: The the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which keeps track of world records in spaceflight such as tallying how many people have become astronauts.

But even the FAI has said it's considered changing its definition to the US-recognized 50-mile mark in response to research from Jonathan McDowell with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

What you should know: It's not a huge deal. And people that fly on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin — both US-based companies — will still be in the American-recognized version of outer space. (Though it should be noted, neither company is sending passengers to orbit.)

Still, Blue Origin took the opportunity on Friday to make the outer-space-definition debacle into a Twitter argument.

Richard Branson is a 70-year-old British billionaire and the founder and chair of the Virgin Group, that is an umbrella of companies, including but not limited to Virgin airlines and Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company that is taking him to space Sunday.

Born in Surrey, England, he is married to Joan Branson, and is a father to three children, Holly, Sam and Clare Sarah, who was born in 1979 and died the same year.

He has also received a knighthood for his contribution to entrepreneurship in 1999.

Widely known for his flamboyant flair, Richard Branson has also crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air balloon and the English Channel in record time for an amphibian vehicle. He was also the oldest person to kitesurf across the Channel in 2012.

He announced Virgin Galactic in 2004, with the aim of sending passengers to space by 2008, and had then set the price for each ticket at $200,000.

But the plans have had to wait 17 years before the company was able to announce that it is ready for its first flight on Sunday.

Still, more than 600 people have agreed to pay between $200,000 and $250,000 to reserve a seat aboard one of the company's space planes, and Virgin Galactic said it's expecting a massive influx of new ticket orders when it reopens sales — at a higher price point — in the near future.

In 2004, during the announcement of Virgin Galactic, Branson said the project could lead to further space-related projects.

"The orbital hotel will happen," he told reporters then. Although 17 years have passed, the company has not released further plans for an orbiting hotel.

Richard Branson spent his morning hanging out with fellow billionaire and space baron Elon Musk.

It's a show of solidarity between two of the most prominent figures in the commercial space industry amid deepening tensions between Branson and Jeff Bezos.

Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic, will attempt to make history when his company's VSS Unity takes off in New Mexico today.

The flight is taking off from a facility in a small town called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

The city — which was once known as Hot Springs – has a year-round population of about 6,000, according to Sierra County.

The small city changed its name in 1950 as part of a publicity stunt to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the radio game show “Truth or Consequences."

The staff of the show sought a town willing to change its name for the anniversary broadcast — and Hot Springs held a special election to officially become Truth or Consequences, the county explains on its website. The motion passed 1,294 to 295.

After the broadcast, the host of the show, Ralph Edwards, vowed to come back the following year, and eventually returned every year, according to the county.

Ahead of his upcoming trip to space, British billionaire Richard Branson spoke to CNN and said he is "going to enjoy every single minute of it."

Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 on the premise that a privately developed spacecraft would make it possible for hundreds of people to become astronauts, no NASA training required.

"I think millions and millions of people out there would want to take my seat," he told CNN, adding that he is excited that this could be the "start for thousands of people who could become astronauts in future years."

After 17 years of building and testing, Branson says he was excited to hear the efforts of Virgin Galactic's team are ready for launch.

"I've managed to avoid getting excited for 17 years since we started building spaceships and motherships and space boards and all these things," he said. "I finally got the call from chief engineers saying that every single box had been ticked on the safety aspect ... And I hit the roof."

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If today's launch is successful, British billionaire Richard Branson is going to beat former CEO and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos to space by nine days. This will make Branson the first billionaire to travel to space aboard a spacecraft he helped fund.

Bezos and Branson's efforts have often been called the "billionaire space race," as both men are competing to develop, test and launch suborbital rockets that can take customers to space. However, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's name is also often thrown around in the "space race" game — even though he hasn't indicated that he wants to join them in the void anytime soon.

Combined, Bezos, Branson and Musk have a net worth of $400 billion, roughly the size of the GDP of the entire nation of Ireland. Similarly, all three men have dedicated large sums of money to their space travel ventures — although each one has slightly different goals.

So, how do these billionaires compare when it comes to space travel?

Jeff Bezos:

Richard Branson:

Elon Musk:

Richard Branson's chosen mode of transportation to Spaceport America this morning?

A bicycle.

Branson arrived just after sunrise to the launch site — which includes a sprawling futuristic building — to begin pre-launch preparations.

If all goes according to plan, billionaire Richard Branson will be heading to space today with the help of his company, Virgin Galactic.

After working to perfect the spacecraft for over two decades, Branson will be the first billionaire to ever travel to space aboard a vehicle he helped fund, beating Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by only nine days.

So, how risky is this flight to space?

Here's a breakdown of the risks Branson and his crew will face:

The possibilities are endless when it comes to potential dangers: The rocket motor could fail to light up. The cabin could lose pressure and threaten the passengers' lives. And the intense physics involved when hurtling out of — and back into — the Earth's atmosphere could tear the vehicle apart.

However, the spacecraft Branson will be boarding, otherwise known as the VSS Unity, has had three successful test flights. In May 2021, Virgin Galactic received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin flying passengers. It is important to note, however, that the FAA mainly focuses on ensuring the safety of people and property on the ground. Thus, this approval does not necessarily guarantee that the spacecraft is safe.

In the years before the FAA's approval, multiple test flights ran amuck, including one in 2014 that left a pilot dead and another seriously injured. In 2019, a seal on the space plane's wing had come undone during a test flight, and in a December 2020 test flight, VSS Unity's onboard rocket motor computer lost connection.

Markus Guerster, an aerospace industry professional who co-authored a 2018 paper on the risks of suborbital space tourism, told us that there is never a perfect time for a company to deem its spacecraft safe enough to fly members of the public.

From the time the mothership leaves the ground to the time the spacecraft lands back down on it, Branson's trip should only take roughly an hour. Unlike traditional space travel where astronauts circle the Earth and float in space for days, Virgin Galactic's flights are brief, up-and-down trips. But the spacecraft will go more than 50 miles above Earth, which the US government considers to mark the boundary of outer space.

Read more about the dangers of Branson's flight here.