The Jeff Bezos-Richard Branson Space Race Is About More Than Two Billionaires ’ Egos

Nobody is selling Team Bezos or Team Branson t-shirts just yet. The competition between billionaires Jeff Bezos (founder of Blue Origin) and Richard Branson (co-founder of Virgin Galactic) to see who can be first to space may never have the historical cachet of Red Sox versus Yankees, Lincoln versus Douglas, Hamilton versus Burr, but it’s a hot contest all the same. This Sunday, July 11, it could reach its pinnacle, when Branson, along with three other Virgin Galactic corporate officers and two pilots, take off aboard their VSS Unity space plane to attempt a suborbital mission that will earn all six their astronaut wings—not to mention bragging rights over Bezos, whose own flight aboard his New Shepard spacecraft is set to happen nine days later, on July 20. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Originally, Bezos was going to fly first, with Branson not scheduled to make his attempt until the end of the year. But on July 1, Bezos notched a public relations win when he announced that he was taking 82 year old Wally Funk—one of 13 female astronaut candidates in the 1960s, all of whom were passed over by NASA in favor of an all-male astronaut corps—on his inaugural flight with him, at last giving her a long-denied taste of space. Just hours later, Branson jumped the flight queue, announcing his earlier July 11 launch date—and, not incidentally, winning back the space race news cycle. “I know nobody will believe me, but honestly there is...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news