Virgin Galactic will send Richard Branson to space on July 11

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: Virgin’s Unity 22 mission will carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists. Among the crew is Richard Branson himself, who will be evaluating the company’s private astronaut experience. It could also mean that Branson will beat spaceflight rival Jeff Bezos to space.

Virgin Galactic, the spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson, has announced that its first fully crewed flight could happen as soon as July 11, pending the weather cooperates and there are no last-minute safety concerns.

Specifically, Branson and the rest of the team will assess the cabin environment, seat comfort, the weightless experience and of course, the views of Earth from the ship. Those aspects may sound trivial, but when you’re paying big bucks for such an experience, you no doubt want it to be as accommodating as possible.

The date – just over a week from now – is noteworthy. Should the mission launch as planned on July 11, it’ll mean that Branson will beat Jeff Bezos to space. The Amazon founder, if you recall, announced last month that he and his brother will be on Blue Origin’s first human spaceflight scheduled for July 20.

Virgin Galactic will livestream the whole event globally across its website and on social media. The action gets started at 9 a.m. Eastern on the day of the flight.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/90288-virgin-galactic-send-richard-branson-space-july-11.html

 

[Vulcanproject]

What's with this rush to be the first billionaire to die in a space accident?

 

[veLa]

What's with this rush to be the first billionaire to die in a space accident?

On second thought, let's send them all.

 

[Aceseven]

It's neat reading about billionaires going into space.

now I'll go pay my astronomically(pun intended) high rent and find some cheap food.

livin.
the.
dream.

 

[R00sT3R]

If this is going into space, then walking to the top of a hill is climbing Everest...

 

[noel24]

I got few questions: Should We start a list of richest people in space? Also, If a richest man on the planet leaves a planet, even for a while, does His title goes to the other in line? Maybe than, after first filthy rich homo sapiens goes to space, We should officially rename a list of richest people on Earth into a list of richest men in the Solar system?

 

[winjer]

Just another way for billionaires to flex their wealth and brag among them selves.

 

[Dimitriid]

We should take this as implicit acceptance that all of these Billionaires plan to abandon ship once we're doomed to die due to global change starting up in the next decade or so since we're already almost at the point of no return: the rats are always the first to leave the ship and that's what they are.

 

[OortCloud]

Little Jeff must be fuming - good. I'm not Richard Branson's number one fan, but anybody who gets one over Jeff-The-Anti-Christ-Beezos is alright with me.

 

[Hardware Geek]

We should take this as implicit acceptance that all of these Billionaires plain to abandon ship once we're doomed to die due to global change starting up in the next decade or so since we're already almost at the point of no return: the rats are always the first to leave the ship and that's what they are.

With the climate change accords currently in place, we will pass the point of no return easily. We need to massively increase our investment in clean energy amd accelerate our reduction of emissions if we have a chance to slow or stop the increase in extreme weather events. Hopefully one day soon we can reverse some of the damage.

 

[ypsylon]

This rush is like showing off who has a bigger one. And in reality they all have nothing.

Poor children in sandpit fighting over dog poop.

I'm not denying the aerospace technology has on our life for past 60+ years, it's just tragic and pathetic that mankind is still barbaric tribal village which cannot unite for anything. We not going into space as American, German, Chinese, etc... we going there to represent our whole species. And all we have are couple billionaires which care nothing for normal people. Let just destroy this planet right now and let someone else start from the beginning.

 

[Bp968]

On second thought, let's send them all.

Its funny reading stuff like this. I remember people being the same way about cell phones when they were called car phones. "Rich *******s" etc etc.

Now your most likely posting thess complaints on an amazing smartphone that has a network and exists due to those first adopters.

My grandparents remember the same thing with airlines. Rich people flew on planes. Now I can catch a flight to the beach for 80$. Ive seen the really savy travelers spend the equivalent of a night out to the movies and the bar on a weekend on a Caribbean island.

So me personally? Im *super* excited about these rich "*******s" flying to space. Its the infrastructure their building that might make it possible for me to see the earth from orbit before I die. That 200k$ ticket will become 20k$ in a decade or so. And maybe, just maybe, it will hit 2k$ at some point (or whatever the inflation adjusted version of that is. Sigh).

 

[VitalyT]

Who wants to take the bet that he's not coming back?

 

[Dimitrios]

There will be a time in the far future where if you have enough money and don't want to go to jail be it for tax evasion or whatever just going to another planet will buy you freedom. Other planets will be run and owned by the rich. They can make their own rules/laws.

 

[Bp968]

There will be a time in the far future where if you have enough money and don't want to go to jail be it for tax evasion or whatever just going to another planet will buy you freedom. Other planets will be run and owned by the rich. They can make their own rules/laws.

Thats sort of what happened during the whole period of time europe was fighting over the americas. As soon as things calm down everyone usually starts happily handing over outright criminals since it benefits everyone (well, all the governments anyway).

The main difference is that the best day on Mars is way way worse than the worst day on the arctic. And yet we don't have criminals/billionaires fleeing to the arctic.

as for some of the comments about billionaires fleeing climate issues, its silly. All of this current crop of space billionaires already know there is no "fleeing earth" and leaving all the "poors". Any space colony in the next century is going to require significant ongoing terran support. If we can manage to build a solid space based manufacturing, extraction and transport economy that is self sustainable, and we as a species can live reasonably long lives in enclosed habitats without going insane, and children can be conceived, born and raised in space, if we can manage to do all these things we can hopefully at least make our species resilient to single point failure (ie, a comet or asteroid, etc). But nothing we can really consider realistic anytime in the next 100 years would even be a shadow of what we have with the earth. We will either need tremendous advances in terraforming sciences and massive long term planning to remake our local planets, or we will need to visit our neighbor stars to see whats up forsale in those systems.

The other option would be tremendous floating cities. Thats actually significantly more likely and feasible than terraforming any of the moons or planets.

 

[dustin_ds3000]

Im hold my 1800 shares

 

[wiyosaya]

I wonder when we will see the petition for him to not be allowed back to Earth??? IMO, he is far more waco than Bezos. Perhaps Darwin will take care of this.

 

[captaincranky]

What's with this rush to be the first billionaire to die in a space accident?

It's an adaptive form of, "survivors guilt".

They just want to soar above the earth while agonizing over, "why am I so very rich, while so many on earth are still so dirt poor".

OTOH, it could just be their massive egos.

 

[captaincranky]

Maybe than, after first filthy rich homo sapiens goes to space, We should officially rename a list of richest people on Earth into a list of richest men in the Solar system?

Would the list still count if we taxonomically reclassified them as the subspecies they technically are, "Homo sapiens repugnus" ?

 

[noel24]

Would the list still count if we taxonomically reclassified them as the subspecies they technically are, "Homo sapiens repugnus" ?

They mate with Their female office assistants, creating relatively healthy offspring, so at best You could classify Them as different race.

 

[captaincranky]

They mate with Their female office assistants, creating relatively healthy offspring, so at best You could classify Them as different race.

"Race", is the taxonomist's politically correct term for, "subspecies", when referring to Homo sapiens. "Clade", or "clan", is also used. In trinomial notation, the sequence is, Genus, species, sub-species. For example Felis silvestris catus, (the common house cat). Which in of itself, is a subspecies of the north African wildcat, Felis sylvestris lybica.

In the rest of the animal kingdom, a subspecies is often defined by, habitat range, size, and coloration. Subspecies can freely breed with each other, sometimes blurring territorial boundaries. Unlike "hybrids" which are inter-special crosses. One very common example of this is a "mule", (Equus asinus x Equus caballus).

"Breeds", are same species crosses, (oftentimes purposely with human intervention), crossed to accentuate certain intrinsic qualities within individual examples. In the case of these astronauts, I expect "breed", would actually be the applicable term. (Although I don't know how they'll go about knocking up the 82 year old female one crew is taking with them).

While I full well realize you were joking, I'm not. (Although I am perhaps being a bit pedantic). Still, I expect you, catch my drift", as it were.

 

[captaincranky]

I wonder when we will see the petition for him to not be allowed back to Earth??? IMO, he is far more waco than Bezos. Perhaps Darwin will take care of this.

I suppose we'll have to wait to see if his signature appears on the petition. That would make his ouster official. (Unless perhaps his great, great, great, great grandson, somehow finds a way to screw up the booster).

But hell, if all you want is, "low earth orbit", a couple hits of ecstasy or orange sunshine and a dime bag of weed, will give you at least that.

Disclaimer: (Or so I've been told).

 

[noel24]

"Race", is the taxonomist's politically correct term for, "subspecies", when referring to Homo sapiens. "Clade", or "clan", is also used. In trinomial notation, the sequence is, Genus, species, sub-species. For example Felis silvestris catus, (the common house cat). Which in of itself, is a subspecies of the north African wildcat, Felis sylvestris lybica.

In the rest of the animal kingdom, a subspecies is often defined by, habitat range, size, and coloration. Subspecies can freely breed with each other, sometimes blurring territorial boundaries. Unlike "hybrids" which are inter-special crosses. One very common example of this is a "mule", (Equus asinus x Equus caballus).

"Breeds", are same species crosses, (oftentimes purposely with human intervention), crossed to accentuate certain intrinsic qualities within individual examples. In the case of these astronauts, I expect "breed", would actually be the applicable term. (Although I don't know how they'll go about knocking up the 82 year old female one crew is taking with them).

While I full well realize you were joking, I'm not. (Although I am perhaps being a bit pedantic). Still, I expect you, catch my drift", as it were.

I'm not a native English speaker, nor expert in taxonomy, but If Youre right, than, oh, ...bummer.
If so, than in Your original reply to My post You're sugesting excluding people from a list of people based on Their race. That's insensitive, maybe even racist.
Especially problematic considering Elon Musk is technically African-American.
I wouldn't touch racial problems this day and age...
;-)

 

[wiyosaya]

OTOH, it could just be their massive egos.

IMO, surely the reason. Branson likely has the one ego to rule them all.

 

[wiyosaya]

I got few questions: Should We start a list of richest people in space? Also, If a richest man on the planet leaves a planet, even for a while, does His title goes to the other in line? Maybe than, after first filthy rich homo sapiens goes to space, We should officially rename a list of richest people on Earth into a list of richest men in the Solar system?

Pretty soon, at least according to his plans to go to Mars, we will be able to anoint Elon Musk "queen of mars".