Race To Space, Jeff Bezos Must Lose To Richard Branson

Richard Branson to lead Bezos into space (Vanityfair)

JAKARTA – Jeff Bezos' plan to become the first billionaire to fly into space does not seem to be going smoothly. The conglomerate owner of Amazon.com was originally scheduled to fly into space on July 20.

Only that ambition was hampered by the appearance of a statement from Richard Branson. The conglomerate that owns the rocket company Virgin Galactic said that if on July 11, he and several of his colleagues, they would fly into space first.

Blue Origin itself has made a tight schedule for its first launch into space on July 20. They will fly on a space tourism rocket called the New Shepard.

They also sell Blue Origin flights commercially. However, it has not yet opened ticket sales or released price information about New Shepard flights. It's just that Blue Shepard is already holding a public auction for available seats at their first crew launch. Given the auction, it is impossible for Blue Origin and Bezos to change the schedule to get ahead of Branson.

Branson himself will fly using his spaceship Virgin Galactic. This move makes the race to fly into space between billionaires even hotter. Jeff Bezos, predicted to lose with the latest statement from Branson. Until now there has been no response from Bezos about it.

According to Reuters, Branson's success in carrying out a mission using Virgin's VSS Unity will be an important milestone in the competition for space flights conducted by private parties.

That puts Branson one step ahead of Bezos in traveling beyond Earth's atmosphere. He even far left Elon Musk, who will fly into space on his rocket, SpaceX.

Branson himself had actually been preparing for his mission a few months ago. The mission is considered to be able to steal the public's attention because it was carried out before Jeff Bezos.

"Virgin Galactic stands at the forefront of a new commercial aerospace industry, one that will open space for humanity and change the world forever," Branson said in a statement.

VSS Unity will carry two pilots and four “mission specialists” on board Branson. This test flight was carried out before Virgin Galactic began to open commercial services in 2022.