Space jam: The different approaches the billionaires are taking in commercial space flight
Space jam
By now you've probably seen that billionaires have been strapping themselves to giant rockets and sending themselves into space. Whether that's a good / fair / efficient / ethical use of their vast resources is certainly a debate worth having but — leaving that issue to one side — it's interesting to note just how different Bezos' and Branson's actual approach to getting to space is.
The Amazon founder's approach is probably a little more what you would expect of a short trip to space. Bezos jumped in a small capsule with 3 others, including the very cool 82-year-old Wally Funk, and blasted to space to more than 350,000ft above sea level in about 4 minutes. From there the passenger capsule detached itself from the rocket booster, and gently parachuted down to earth with the entire thrill ride over in about 10 minutes.
The Virgin Galactic approach was arguably a little more interesting. A "relatively" normal looking plane took off and gently climbed to around 50,000ft over the course of about 45 minutes, carrying a separate spaceship with it. That spaceship was then detached and its rocket fired, allowing it to climb to an apogee (peak altitude) of around 282,700ft. The spaceship then descended more slowly than the Blue Origin capsule, eventually landing like a conventional plane after about an hour of total flight time.
Tickets to space
On top of the ego boost and media coverage, both men are hoping to make a buck from their successful space flights. Bezos has announced that orders to fly to space were already nearing $100m while Virgin Galactic is hoping to start providing commercial space flights to paying customers in 2022.
