British billionaire Richard Branson has successfully flown into space and returned to Earth on a spaceship designed by his own space exploration team.
70-year-old Branson flew on a Virgin Galactic V.S.S. Unity rocket plane and after taking off from Spaceport America in New Mexico reached 50 miles above Earth's surface, which is widely regarded as being 'outer space'.
The flight initially took off in the form of an airplane, however, at roughly 50,000 feet Branson rocket was launched via rockets from the aircraft another 50 miles into the air. Both the aircraft and the rocket later landed safely separately.
Once the rocket was at maximum altitude Branson and the other crew members experienced weightlessness due to them escaping Earth's magnetic pull. The total trip lasted around 1 hour.
Six crew members took part in the flight, including Branson himself. The others included pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci and three space experts, Beth Moses, chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennet, lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic.
Branson said during the flight:
"To all you kids out there — I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars. Now I'm an adult in a spaceship...If we can do this, just imagine what you can do."
Branson is just one of a handful of multi-billionaires who are hoping to enter space soon on their own space programs, including two of the world's richest people, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who are expected to fly on their own space-shuttles into space within the next year or so.
The video of Branson's space flight can be watched below:
[h/t: Futurism]
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