Competition for Jeff Bezos
Virgin Galactic is also now flying tourists into space
8/10/2023 8:34 p.m
With its second commercial space flight, Virgin Galactic is taking tourists to heavenly heights for the first time. Around 88 kilometers above the earth, an 80-year-old Olympian and a mother-daughter duo briefly enjoy weightlessness. The company now wants to offer the flights monthly.
The private space company Virgin Galactic has taken tourists into space for the first time. The spacecraft “VSS Unity” flew the 80-year-old Briton Jon Goodwin, the 46-year-old Keisha Schahaff from the Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda and their 18-year-old daughter Anastatia Mayers to an altitude of 88 kilometers above the earth. The space tourists were able to see the curvature of the Earth and briefly enjoy weightlessness before returning to Earth, live images showed.
Launched in the US state of New Mexico, Mission Galactic 02 was Virgin Galactic’s first flight with tourists on board. The company, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, had already completed its first commercial flight at the end of June, taking two members of the Italian Air Force and an Italian researcher into space. The Italians made several brief attempts there.
Keisha Schahaff had won two tickets for the space flight with Virgin Galactic in a lottery almost two years ago. At the time, Branson traveled to Antigua and Barbuda to personally inform them of their win. Schahaff took her daughter Anastatia, who is studying philosophy and physics in Scotland. The flight’s third passenger, Jon Goodwin, had competed as a canoeist in the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 2014 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was now the second person in history with Parkinson’s to fly into space.
At Virgin Galactic, a carrier aircraft first brings the “VSS Unity” to an altitude of around 15 kilometers. There, the spaceship, which looks like a private jet, disengages and flies further into space on its own. Founded in 2004, the company is now aiming for monthly flights into space. In July 2021, Richard Branson had personally participated in a space flight. After that, the company had to take a longer break for technical improvements.
The company competes with Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which has already sent 31 people into space on short suborbital flights. Since an accident in September 2022, however, his rocket has remained on the ground.