Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
Richard Branson to Beat Jeff Bezos as First Billionaire in Space by 9 Days
Posted
July 2, 2021
Views
1,364
Likes
29
Comments
16
Engagement
July 2, 2021
1,364
29
16
3.30%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
1:08Now PlayingRichard Branson plans to fly to space on July 11, days before a similar journey by fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. The shares of Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. surged.
The VSS Unity spacecraft will also carry three Virgin Galactic employees and two pilots from the launch site in New Mexico, according to a company statement Thursday. Bezos is planning a trip to space July 20 from nearby West Texas aboard a rocket made by Blue Origin, the Amazon.com Inc. founder’s space company.
Branson’s suborbital flight would fulfill a longtime goal for the U.K. billionaire and Virgin Galactic, which he founded in 2004. The company recently completed data analysis from its last test flight on May 22, and concluded it was ready to evaluate the cabin experience, said Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier. Branson had his pick of which of two planned flights this summer he’d prefer to join.
“The foundation of it is: We’re ready,” Colglazier said in an interview. “There is nothing about a space race or ‘Who goes first?’ that played into this. We do our test flights when we’re ready to fly them.”
Branson will evaluate the “private astronaut experience,” the company said, as Virgin Galactic prepares to offer flights to well-heeled customers in 2022. The voyage this month will be similar to the test flight in May, in which the Unity flew to an altitude of more than 55 miles (89 kilometers).
“After more than 16 years of research, engineering, and testing, Virgin Galactic stands at the vanguard of a new commercial space industry, which is set to open space to humankind and change the world for good,” Branson said in the statement.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app.
Have a story to tell? Fill out this survey for a chance to have it featured on Bloomberg Quicktake
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
