First we were a species that had not done a Great Space Thing, and then we were a species that had. First it was one thing-then it was another. Each one of them was the historical equivalent of a chemical phase change-when water, say, grows hot enough to sublime into steam or cold enough to harden into ice. The first person in space the first rendezvous in space the first walk in space the first trip to the moon. Over the decades, space has unfolded for us as a series of milestones. Feud? None here-at least not for public consumption. This morning, Musk went that one better, having breakfast with Branson before he left Earth. But yesterday, Bezos wished Branson his best in an Instagram post. Much ink and at least a little bile were spilled in the past week about the supposedly bitter race to space between Branson and Bezos, as well as over the fact that Branson’s VSS Unity would not cross the 100 km (62 mi.) threshold that most consider the official boundary to space, while Bezos’s New Shepard passenger spacecraft will. All three companies were founded in the early years of the century, and all three men have thus been making that promise for going on two decades. Branson and others-including Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (founder of Blue Origin)-have long promised that their private companies would lead to the democratization of space, making the experience of leaving the Earth something available to more than just the elite. Noted, again.Īnd then, today, all of that changed. So Branson duplicated Shepard’s feat three generations later? Fine, again. Even that flight looked small compared to the journey of the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin, who, less than a month earlier, became the first human being in space, flying his Vostok 1 spacecraft through a full orbit around the Earth. But history will recall that the flight occurred more than 60 years after Alan Shepard flew the same popgun trajectory aboard his Freedom 7 Mercury capsule, becoming the first American in space. MT, soared 86 km (53.5 miles) up, arced into space for four minutes of weightlessness and then glided gently back to Earth, landing on a runway in the New Mexico Desert.įine. Along with two pilots and three other passengers, Branson lifted off aboard his VSS Unity spacecraft shortly before 9:00 a.m. Yes, the billionaire co-founder of Virgin Galactic woke up intending to go to space today, and yes, he went. Depending on how you look at things, Richard Branson did not accomplish terribly much this morning.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |