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Founder and CEO of SpaceX Elon musk booked a ride to suborbital space with Virgin Galactic, media reports said.
Richard branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin Group, made such a trip on Sunday July 11, flying on the Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity Spacecraft First Full Crew Space Flight. This was the fourth total spaceflight for the six-passenger, two-pilot Unity, which is on track to start full commercial operations in early 2022, provided a few more test flights this fall go well. .
Branson told the Sunday Times that Musk deposited a $ 10,000 deposit to reserve a seat on a future suborbital flight, and a spokesperson for Virgin Galactic confirmed the news to the Wall Street Journal. (The most recently listed total ticket price is $ 250,000.) It is not known when Musk’s flight will take off.
Related: “Welcome to the Dawn of a New Space Age,” Branson Says After Launch
“Elon is a friend, and maybe I will one day travel on one of his ships,” Branson, 70, told the Sunday Times. (SpaceX’s Crew Dragon goes into Earth orbit, and the company’s ongoing development Vessel system is designed to take people and payloads to the moon, Mars and beyond.)
Musk was on hand to witness Branson’s flight, which took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic’s commercial hub. In the hours leading up to Sunday morning’s flight, in fact, Branson tweeted a Photo of himself standing next to a Musk with no shoes on.
“A big day ahead. Great for starting the morning with a friend. Feeling good, feeling excited, feeling ready,” Branson wrote in the tweet.
Another billionaire is expected to soar into suborbital space next week. Founder of Blue Origin Jeff Bezos will ride on the first crewed space flight of his company’s New Shepard vehicle, which is scheduled for July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. His brother Mark, pioneering aviator Wally Funk and the still mysterious winner of the auction who paid $ 28 million for the seat alongside them are also flying with Bezos.
Musk is the richest or second richest person in the world (behind Bezos), depending on the day this assessment is made, so he’s certainly rich enough to sample various suborbital offerings. (Blue Origin did not disclose ticket prices, but they should be in the lower six digits.) Given the long-standing rivalry between Musk and Bezos, however, it would be a surprise if we saw the head of SpaceX soon climb into New Shepard.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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