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Virgin Group founder Richard Branson speaks at a press conference on March 30 in Las Vegas. (John Locher / AP)
A few months after another successful test flight in the Mojave Desert, billionaire Richard Branson announced that his space company, Virgin Galactic, could be among the stars within a few weeks.
"We should be in the space of here a few weeks, not months," said Branson. said CNBC Tuesday. "And then we will be in space with myself in months and not years."
Virgin's 68-year-old general manager, along with Amazon's Jeffrey P. Bezos and Tesla's Elon Musk, are determined to bring tourists into space as soon as possible. (Bezos owns the Washington Post.) Bezos said its space company, Blue Origin, is also expected to fly test flights by the end of 2018. In September, Musk announced that its SpaceX company had sold his first ticket for a trip around the moon. . Last year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted that the space sector would represent $ 2.7 trillion by 2045.
[Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic just got another step closer to flying tourists to space]
Branson previously stated that he thought Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin would both "have a person in space at the same time". But he said that they "are not in a race to go into space. … All that matters in the end is that everyone is safe and healthy. "
To prepare for his maiden voyage, Branson said, he trained rigorously: cycling, tennis and passing through a centrifuge to familiarize his body with the gravitational forces of space.
Some 700 people are on the Virgin Galactic waiting list (up to $ 250,000 per ticket) for the company's first commercial flights, regardless of location. The other Branson space company, Virgin Orbit, has signed a contract with the Pentagon for the launch of "technology demonstration satellites", which it plans to do by 2019.
The quest for space travel in Branson began in 2004, when he obtained space technology rights from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, who funded a company that flew a vehicle three times over. beyond 100 kilometers of space. But Branson's efforts have not been exaggerated. In 2014, a first version of a Virgin Galactic spacecraft s' separated and crashed during a test flight over the Mojave Desert, killing a co-pilot, Michael Alsbury.
Since then, Virgin Galactic has made several test flights successfully. His space planes reached Mach 2 safely, about twice the speed of sound. Branson hopes to have a spacecraft capable of carrying six passengers and two pilots over the Earth.
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