First published July 15, 2021.
On July 11, 2021, Richard Branson rode his own company's rocket plane, VSS Unity, to the edge of space and back. The flight, called Unity 22, climbed to about 86 kilometres (roughly 53.5 miles or 282,000 feet) above New Mexico, gave its six passengers and pilots a few minutes of floating in a silent cabin, and glided back to a runway about an hour after the whole trip began. It was Virgin Galactic's first flight with a full crew in the cabin, and it made Branson, then 70, one of the first billionaires to ride a spacecraft he had paid to build.
What follows explains how the flight worked, who was on board, why the passengers floated, and why people still argue about whether 86 kilometres really counts as "space".
How a spaceplane reaches space without a launch pad
Unity 22 did not start on a launch tower. The journey began on an ordinary runway at Spaceport America, a state-owned facility in the desert of southern New Mexico. A large twin-fuselage carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, took off with VSS Unity hanging beneath it and climbed for close to an hour, much like a heavy airliner.
At an altitude of around 44,000 to 46,000 feet, Eve released the spaceplane. A few seconds later Unity's pilots lit its hybrid rocket motor, which burned for about a minute and pushed the craft into a near-vertical climb at more than three times the speed of sound. When the motor shut down, Unity kept coasting upward on momentum until gravity slowed it to a stop at the top of its arc.
To come home, the spaceplane used a clever trick called "feathering": its tail booms rotate upward so that the craft falls belly-first like a shuttlecock, which keeps it stable and slows it in the thin upper air. Once lower down, the tail returns to its normal position and Unity glides, without engine power, to a landing at the spaceport. The carrier aircraft lands separately.
The trip is short. From release to touchdown, the rocket-powered part of the mission lasts only around a quarter of an hour; the full outing, including the climb under the mothership, took roughly an hour.
Who flew on Unity 22
Six people were on board. Two were pilots and four were in the cabin:
- Dave Mackay, Virgin Galactic's chief pilot, and Michael Masucci, who flew the spaceplane.
- Beth Moses, the company's chief astronaut instructor, who had already flown on an earlier test flight.
- Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer.
- Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations, who carried out a plant-science experiment for the University of Florida and became the second India-born woman to fly to space, after Kalpana Chawla.
- Richard Branson, the founder, whose job on board was officially to evaluate the experience that paying customers would later have.
During the live broadcast Branson spoke directly to children watching at home. "I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars. Now I'm an adult in a spaceship," he said, as reported by CNN.
The video above shows the flight from release to landing, including views from inside the cabin as the crew unbuckled and drifted towards the windows.
Why the crew floated: the real physics of weightlessness
A common explanation online, and one that appeared in many early reports, is that passengers float because they have "escaped Earth's gravity" or its magnetic pull. Neither is true. At 86 kilometres, Earth's gravity is still about 97 percent as strong as it is on the ground, and the planet's magnetic field has nothing to do with keeping people in their seats.
The floating happens because, once the rocket shuts off, the spaceplane and everyone inside it are in free fall together. They are still moving upward at first, then downward, but all on the same curved path. Because the cabin is falling at exactly the same rate as the people in it, nothing presses them against the floor, so they drift. The effect lasts only a few minutes, until the thickening air starts to slow the vehicle.
Astronauts on the International Space Station float for the same reason. The difference is that the station is moving sideways so fast, about 28,000 kilometres per hour, that it keeps falling around the Earth instead of into it. Unity never came close to that speed, which is why its flight is called suborbital.
Did Branson really go to space? The 80 km versus 100 km debate
There is no physical line in the sky where space begins, so the boundary is a matter of convention. The US Air Force, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration have long used 50 miles (about 80 kilometres) to award astronaut wings. Unity 22, at about 86 kilometres, cleared that mark comfortably.
Many others, including the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which keeps records for air and space sports, use the Kármán line at 100 kilometres. By that standard, Unity 22 fell short. Blue Origin, the rival company founded by Jeff Bezos, made that point loudly in the days before its own flight.
Either way, the crew saw the black sky and the curve of the Earth and experienced true free fall, which is what most passengers are paying for.
The billionaire space race of July 2021
Branson's flight came just nine days before Bezos flew on Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule on July 20, 2021. New Shepard is a very different machine: a reusable rocket that launches vertically and sends a capsule above 100 kilometres before it returns under parachutes. Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX already flew NASA astronauts to orbit, did not take a flight himself; SpaceX's first all-civilian orbital mission, Inspiration4, followed in September 2021.
Unity 22 was not without controversy. In September 2021 the Federal Aviation Administration briefly grounded Virgin Galactic after reports that the spaceplane had strayed outside its assigned airspace during its descent. The company changed its procedures and was cleared to fly again later that month.
What happened next for Virgin Galactic
After further delays and upgrades, Virgin Galactic began commercial flights in June 2023, starting with a research mission for the Italian Air Force and National Research Council. VSS Unity then carried a series of paying passengers, with tickets reported at up to about $450,000 each. The company retired Unity after its June 2024 flight to focus on a new generation of "Delta-class" spaceships, designed to fly far more often; it has said it aims to restart passenger service with them, though dates have shifted before.
For anyone weighing a suborbital ticket, the practical picture is simple: a few minutes of weightlessness, a stunning view, and a flight that is a powerful experience but not orbital spaceflight. Health screening and training are part of the process, and anyone with a medical condition should talk to a doctor before considering it.
Sources: Wikipedia: Virgin Galactic Unity 22; Virgin Galactic: first fully crewed spaceflight; Virgin Galactic Unity 22 media archive; CNN; SpacePolicyOnline: FAA and the Unity 22 anomaly investigation; Wikipedia: Sirisha Bandla; Wikipedia: Kármán line; first reported via Futurism.
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