Jeff Bezos: How Amazon founder Jeff Bezos may miss his chance to be the first billionaire to take flight to space – Times of India

Jeff Bezos is planning a space trip with his brother on July 20 on a space rocket built by his company Blue Origin, he announced this last month through an Instagram post. Now that we have entered July as the clock keeps on ticking, there might be another billionaire who looks all set to beat Bezos in the space trip and become the first billionaire to go to space. He happens to be Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, which holds over 400 companies in various sectors. The business magnate is planning his space trip quite earlier than Bezos; he plans to fly away on July 11 on a Virgin Galactic spaceflight, exactly nine days before Bezos.
It looks like both of them look quite eagerly to their space sojourns. While Bezos said that he has dreamed of travelling to space ever since he was five years old, Branson said on Twitter that he’s always been a dreamer, his mum taught him never to give up and to reach for the stars.

Branson would be travelling to space in a VSS Unity rocket as part of the Unity 22 mission by the company. It will be carrying a full crew into space for the first time that is made up of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, one of the specialists being the business magnate himself. His role involves evaluating the customer spaceflight experience. The July 11 trip would be the 22nd flight test for the VSS Unity and fourth crewed spaceflight of Virgin Galactic. The space flight is going to be livestreamed globally.
The purpose of the space trip
As per a Virgin Galactic blog post, the mission will focus on “evaluating the commercial customer cabin with a full crew, including the cabin environment, seat comfort, the weightless experience, and the views of Earth that the spaceship delivers — all to ensure every moment of the astronaut’s journey maximizes the wonder and awe created by space travel and demonstrating the conditions for conducting human-tended research experiments.”