Richard Branson, the billionaire business magnate and founder of the Virgin Group, who is now a commercial astronaut, too, reached the edge of space aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity on Sunday, days before his fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos will travel into space on July 20. Branson is currently the first person in the world to go to space in his own ship.
Sharing experiences of his first ever trip to space and sending out a message to children, Richard Branson wrote on Twitter that as a child he dreamt of looking up to the stars and now as an adult, he was in a spaceship “looking down to our beautiful Earth.”
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“To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do,” Branson further wrote on the microblogging site. A just over 30-second-long video attached with the Tweet showed how happy and mesmerised Branson and his colleagues were as they experienced zero gravity for the first time.
Apart from the 71-year-old Branson, the space journey on Sunday included five of his colleagues from Virgin, two of whom are pilots. The shuttle breached the United States recognised boundary of space, and reached an altitude of 86 kilometres. All aboard the VSS Unity also experienced weightlessness for a few minutes, according to news agency AFP.
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Underlining the fact that space is for all of humanity, Branson announced in a blog post that Virgin Atlantic’s will team up with Omaze to facilitate space flights for all and those interested could fill in their details on Omaze.com/space.
“Every charitable donation goes to support Space For Humanity and you’ll be entered into the Omaze sweepstake for the chance to win two seats aboard one of the first commercial Virgin Galactic space flights,” Branson said further.
