Founder of Virgin Orbit Denies the Competition with Blue Origin in Race for Space Tourism

Virgin Orbit managed to beat Blue Origin in the space tourism race. This led to lots of conversations about competition between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. Branson has denied this, insisting it’s not the case.

He went on to add that the two companies play a crucial role in further space exploration. However, Branson had reached the edge of space first, on 12th July.

According to the set timeline, he outstripped Blue Origin by several days. Jeff Bezos is all set to fly on 20th July with his brother Mark, Wally Funk, the crew, and one more person, who won the auction for a passenger’s seat.

Virgin Orbit’s owner went up into orbit last Sunday with three members of his staff and two pilots. The three staff members were Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, Lead Operations Engineer Colin Bennet, and Vice President of Government Affairs Research Operations Sirisha Bandla.

Blue Origin Space Flight to Go Higher

According to the CEO of Blue Origin, Bob Smith, Jeff Bezos’ flight will venture further into space. The announcement came in light of the Virgin Orbit flight that got as far as 50km above the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Blue Origin’s vehicle will fly slightly above the Karman line, during which the crew will experience weightlessness for 3 minutes. The entire sub-orbital flight will expectedly take 11 minutes from start to finish.

Virgin Galactic has a long queue of people awaiting the next flights, including celebrities. People like Justin Bieber, Tom Hanks, and Lady Gaga are waiting their turn as the company plans for more flights.

The space tourism flight by the Virgin Orbit founder was another test flight for the VSS Unity rocket plane. It increased the total number of tests to 22.