Richard Branson aims to notch a milestone for private space travel with Sunday’s launch of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity Spaceship Two from New Mexico. Branson, the Virgin Group business …
, host of CBS’ “The Late Show,” was recruited earlier this week as a last-minute host for the live stream after Colbert tweeted about Branson’s voyage.
The VSS Unity is designed to vault into suborbital space after hitching a ride with a carrier airplane. At 50,000 feet, the VSS Unity is expected to drop from the wings of the carrier and fire its rockets to send the spacecraft about 125 miles above earth, allowing the crew to achieve weightlessness for a brief period before coming back down to terra firma.
Branson’s flight is part of the billionaire space race wave that will see Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and a few others blast off into suborbital space on July 20 in a craft and flight made possible by his Blue Origin exploration venture. Tesla mogul Elon Musk is behind SpaceX, which also is targeting the commercial space travel market.
In June, Virgin Galactic said it has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to move forward with plans to “fly customers into space” after a series of successful test flights. Pictured: Unity 22 crew members Dave Mackay , Colin Bennett , Beth Moses , Richard Branson , Sirisha Bandla and Michael Masucci .
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