By akademiotoelektronik, 21/02/2023

First flight in a successful space for Richard Branson

British billionaire Richard Branson landed without incident on Sunday at New Mexico after his flight in space, inaugurating, he hopes, the era of commercial flights in space.

The VSS Unity vessel, which also transported two pilots and three other passengers, landed on a track on the base Spaceport America at around 5:40 p.m..Richard Branson who, still aboard the vessel going back to earth, described a "unique experience in a life", is the first billionaire to have made the trip in a machine developed by a company he himself founded,Beating Jeff Bezos who has to fly him on July 20.

Takeoff should take place at 3 p.m. French time, and was finally delayed due to bad weather, and took place at 4:30 p.m., broadcast live from the Virgin Galactic site.

This is not really a rocket here but rather a huge carrier plane, driven by two pilots, which must first take off from a traditional track and win at altitude for about an hour.

Weightlessness

Under this plane is hooked the VSS Unity ship - a copy of the Spaceshipptwo model - with two other pilots and four passengers on board: Richard Branson and three employees of the company.

Some 15 kilometers high, the vessel, which is roughly the size of a private jet, was dropped and then lit its engine for a supersonic ascent, up to exceeding the 80 km at altitude - the fixed limitin the United States for the space border.

Once the engine is cut, the passengers were able to detach themselves from their siege to float for a few minutes in weightlessness, and admire the curvature of the earth from one of the 12 portholes of the cabin.

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After a peak at approximately 90 km altitude, the vessel went down by hovering.Full flight, from offset to landing, was to last about 90 minutes, it was finally shorter.

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With this first, the boiling British entrepreneur led to the post his American rival Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin rocket must take off on July 20.Richard Branson, a week before his 71st birthday, insisted that he was engaged with Jeff Bezos in a friendly rivalry and not in a personal race.

In addition, a third actor, the spacex of the billionaire Elon Musk, plans to send in orbit in September its first fully civil crew - without the manager -, after having already carried out numerous launches to the International Space Station for NASA.