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Space billionaire Elon Musk bought a space ticket to Virgin Galactic from space billionaire Richard Branson, the the Wall Street newspaper quotes a company spokesperson.
Musk, CEO and founder of SpaceX, had the Virgin Galactic ticket ahead of Branson’s flight to space on Sunday, a person familiar with the purchase said. The edge. It’s unclear where Musk stands in Virgin Galactic’s line of about 600 other potential SpaceShipTwo passengers, but the post itself is an extension of his apparent friendship with Branson that contrasts with all the nerve and pettiness this month. This is Blue Origin, the other big space company founded by the other super-rich billionaire in the space industry, Jeff Bezos. It is also seen as a friendly endorsement of the Virgin Galactic rocket-powered aircraft.
Branson flew into space on Sunday aboard his company’s SpaceShipTwo space plane in a ridiculously extravagant test flight that included elaborate video segments, a concert, and celebrity appearances from Stephen Colbert and the astronaut Chris Hadfield. After a successful launch into the air, Branson and three other Virgin Galactic employees briefly floated around the cabin of the spacecraft in microgravity before returning to the ground a few minutes later.
Musk’s SpaceX has mainly focused on government contracts to transport astronauts and cargo into space, but its first private astronaut mission is slated for September. This mission will be a longer (and much more expensive) orbit trip, not just a few minutes above the edge of Earth’s atmosphere like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.
Musk and Branson are good friends. The Tesla CEO watched Branson take off in person from Spaceport America on Sunday. “Thank you for being so supportive and being such a good friend, Elon,” Branson tweeted before the flight. Branson spent his pre-dawn morning before take off with Musk. “Great to start the morning with a friend,” he said in another Tweeter. “To feel good, to feel excited, to feel ready. “
SpaceShipTwo is the rocket plane that is at the center of Virgin Galactic’s nascent space tourism activity. Each ticket for one of the six seats on the plane sells for around $ 250,000, and the company has so far booked more than 600 passengers, including celebrities like Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio. Bezos’ Blue Origin is most competitive with Virgin for a piece of the space tourism pie, aiming to launch customers to a slightly higher altitude on an entirely different system: the New Shepard suborbital rocket.
Bezos’ show-and-tell with New Shepard is slated for July 20.
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