The gates for space tourism have just opened, and people are already crowding to go on a trip to the edge of space. While Jeff Bezos is getting ready to go on its first commercial flight, one customer has already booked his own ticket to fly with Virgin Galactic. And he's no regular customer but SpaceX's founder himself – Elon Musk.
On Sunday, before Virgin Galactic's first passenger flight, Elon Musk visited Richard Branson
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In a statement for the Wallstreet Journal, Virgin Galactic said that Musk bought a ticket aboard the company's air-launched spacecraft.
We're not sure just where exactly the SpaceX founder stands on the waiting list, but this is bound to get some attention.
The news doesn't come as a surprise, though. On Sunday, July 11th, before Virgin Galactic embarked on its historic flight that kicked off a new era of space tourism, its founder, Richard Branson, took to Twitter to post a picture with Elon Musk. Along with the iconic picture, he stated that it was "great to start the morning with a friend," acknowledging the friendship between them.
This "bromance" only comes naturally since Musk also had his eyes on the space industry for quite some time now. You might think they'd be rivals in this billionaire space race, but unlike Jeff Bezos, who also aims to put Blue Origin's name on short suborbital flights, SpaceX's founder plans include sending large rockets into space with the goal of eventually getting to Mars.
This goes to say that, for now, there are only good vibes between the two. But I wouldn't count on it if their goals will ever overlap. Until Musk gets to have his 50-mile (80 kilometers) high journey with Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos is set to fly on Blue Origin's first passenger flight on July 20th.
Ahead of the flight, Blue Origin hinted that it will travel a few miles higher than Virgin Galactic. The New Shepard spacecraft will go above the internationally-recognized boundary of space, the so-called Kármán Line, which is located at an altitude of 62 miles (100 km). By U.S. standards, this difference is arbitrary and it’s still considered ”space”.
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