Richard Branson Reaches Space on Virgin Galactic Space Trip

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.—Richard Branson reached the sting of area on a flight aimed at spurring a brand new, multibillion-dollar space-tourism business.

The British entrepreneur and 5 crew members crossed the brink on a take a look at flight of the spacecraft developed by Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., that climbed greater than 50 miles above the Earth’s floor.

The spacecraft VSS Unity separated from the launch aircraft VMS Eve, which took off after a 100-minute climate delay on the launch facility in New Mexico.

The flight is a part of a broader push from corporations and traders to develop viable companies primarily based on human area flight, lengthy dominated by authorities area businesses with scientific and coverage missions. There have been cases of personal space-tourist journeys previously, such because the investor Dennis Tito’s 2001 go to to the Worldwide House Station, however constructing a non-public business round such journey has proved elusive for industrial enterprises to this point.

A lot of entrepreneurs goal to alter that. Amazon.com Inc.’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has been investing in his area firm, Blue Origin LLC, which plans to take him and three others to area on an organization rocket later this month. Elon Musk’s House Exploration Applied sciences Corp., or SpaceX, plans to fly the chief government of a funds firm to area this yr.