CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA (AP) – Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic, is seeking to beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos into space by nine days. Branson’s firm revealed Thursday evening that its next test flight will take place on July 11 and that one of the six persons on board will be Branson himself. The winged rocket spacecraft, the first to carry a full crew, will take off from New Mexico.
Following the announcement, Virgin Galactic stock SPCE, -6.11 percent surged over 27% higher in after-hours trading on Thursday. Meanwhile, on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Bezos plans to launch a rocket into space from West Texas. He’ll be accompanying his brother, a female aerospace pioneer and the winner of a $28 million charity auction, on the first public flight of a Blue Origin rocket. Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aerospace pioneer, will take a Blue Origin trip with Jeff Bezos. Branson refused to announce when he will go into space as recently as Wednesday due to restrictions imposed by his publicly traded corporation. He insisted, though, that he was healthy and ready to fly as soon as his engineers gave him the green light. He’ll be 71 years old a week after the launch. Virgin Galactic launches its rocket ship from an airplane at a height of about 55 miles. The capsule of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is launched from the ground and flies to a height of around 66 miles. Both of those heights are regarded as the limits of space. SpaceX, on the other hand, places its capsules — both people and cargo — into orbit around the globe. This article was written with the help of MarketWatch./n
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