Richard Branson: galactic space ranger or rocket-powered wally?

Isn’t it typical? We wait all these years for some crazy billionaire to launch themselves into space and then two come along at once.

You will have probably heard the news that Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, plans to ride the next Blue Origin flight into space on 20 July (we covered it a couple of weeks ago). Well, not to be outdone, Richard Branson has now announced that he’ll be doing the same aboard Virgin’s SpaceShip Unity. He’ll also do it earlier than Bezos, on 11 July.

One small step for man. One giant leap for… Necker Island?

Yes, brand promotion will be a big part of the decision, but the Virgin founder can hardly be blamed for wanting to get into space first. Space has been his dream since he launched the Virgin Galactic brand in 2004. At the dawn of the commercial space age, Branson’s ambition was met with considerable scorn. He couldn’t just claim the Solar System, could he? He had to reach for the entire galaxy and, even then, there was doubt if there was enough room for his ego.

Yet for a while, it looked like he was going to win the race. Early flights of the Virgin SpaceShip proved that the technology was viable. It wouldn’t be long before regular flights would carry tourists into space. Or so he promised when he backed up his certainty by selling tickets in 2013. Then tragedy struck. In 2014, a test flight of SpaceShipTwo ended when it broke up over the Mojave, killing the pilot, Michael Alsbury. Virgin Galactic went silent.

Only in recent months has Branson become increasingly vocal about his plans for Virgin Galactic. His problem is that the private space sector now looks quite different to how it looked in 2014. It’s noticeable how the proximity of the imminent launches is proportional to the maturity of vehicles being used. Meanwhile, there’s no talk of Elon Musk going to space – he sensibly says it’s too dangerous – although Space X’s Dragon capsules riding on a Falcon 9 rocket is currently the most mature and reliable technology this side of any UFO phenomenon.

SpaceX has already been delivering crews and cargo to the International Space Station and Musk’s progress has been so rapid that he’s already talking about retiring Dragon and Falcon, having turned his attention to the next generation of craft called Starship. On Thursday, the same day Branson made his announcement, the first Starship booster rolled out to the test pad at Boca Chica, Texas, with a suborbital launch planned for August. Just for scale, the finished Starship sitting on its reusable rocket stage will stand at 400 feet. Bezos’s New Shephard is just 59 feet tall. Meanwhile, Branson will try to steal the limelight with a vehicle that looks like a highly modified executive jet.

So, is it an exciting twist in the private space race or a pathetic bid for relevance in a competition that has already left Branson far behind? As with so many of Branson’s stunts, it’s hard to tell.

One could already sense desperation when Jeff Bezos made his announcement last month. Although Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, two years before Musk founded SpaceX, Musk’s company has won big NASA contracts and leapt so far ahead that it made sense that Bezos would have to do something to win back the interest of the space flight community who have become hugely invested in every development of Musk’s Falcon and now Starship.

Bezos is certainly risking his life by joining the first crewed flight of a vehicle still in development, but New Shepard has already flown 15 times. The majority of those have also been above 100km or the so-called “Karman Line” – the internationally recognised edge of space.

Branson, on the other hand, will be playing catch-up in a vehicle that only reached “space” three times by the US definition, which places the border of space at the lower altitude of 80km. Branson will be riding technology that is considerably less proven.

If both succeed, they will gain publicity for their respective programmes, but the market for space tourism is yet unproven. How many people are willing to spend many thousands for a brief suborbital hop to experience a few minutes of zero-gravity? Long term, the same vehicles could be used to speed up long-distance travel but, again, the economics are uncertain. Over all of this looms the shadow of SpaceX, which could also adapt its Starship technology for sub-orbital flight. There are as many questions as there might be opportunities, assuming, of course, that Branson and Bezos both make it back down in one piece.