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Virgin Galactic: Richard Branson's Space Tourism Company

Virgin Galactic is a private space tourism company founded by Richard Branson to provide space flights to wealthy individuals and eventually make space travel affordable to ordinary people. While it aims to be the front runner, its goals have been delayed and it suffered a fatal accident in 2014. It faces competition from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Orion Span and Boeing who all seek to make space tourism a reality in the near future through various spacecraft and destinations from low earth orbit to the Moon and Mars.

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86 views3 pages

Virgin Galactic: Richard Branson's Space Tourism Company

Virgin Galactic is a private space tourism company founded by Richard Branson to provide space flights to wealthy individuals and eventually make space travel affordable to ordinary people. While it aims to be the front runner, its goals have been delayed and it suffered a fatal accident in 2014. It faces competition from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Orion Span and Boeing who all seek to make space tourism a reality in the near future through various spacecraft and destinations from low earth orbit to the Moon and Mars.

Uploaded by

rushit
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Virgin Galactic: Richard Branson's space tourism company

Last month 12th july 2021, Rechard branson is become the first billionaire and first private
space agency person to climbs space without government support. His aims to provide space
tourism for everyone. His moto is to everyone can go to the space.

What is Virgin Galactic?

Virgin Galactic is a private space tourism company that aims to fly tourists to over the space —
someday. The company was founded by Rechard branson, a British aerospace and music
entrepreneur. Virgin Galactic is widely regarded as the front runner within the ‘space tourism
race’, having put one of its space planes in outer space in 2018.

The company headquarters is located in Mojave, California, and Virgin Galactic has already sold
hundreds of tickets for future flights into space. While early customers are primarily celebrities,
scientists and other extremely wealthy individuals, the long-term goal is for the flights to
affordable for ordinary people too.

Although the company is well-placed to deliver space travel in the near future, it has not been
without its issues. Virgin Galactic originally aimed to deliver space flight by 2009, but it was
delayed, while in 2014 the Virgin Galactic spaceship VSS Enterprise crashed, resulting in the death
of its co-pilot, Michael Alsbury.

Figure 1 - Virgin Galactic Headquarters

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What is Space Tourism?

Space tourism is the name used to describe a specific kind of space travel, which is used for
business purposes. It essentially refers to sending private citizens into space, in exchange for
money. Space tourists are also sometimes described as private astronauts or commercial
astronauts.
To Now, only the Russian Space Agency has actually successfully carried out regular commercial
space flights, although a number of private companies are aiming to do so in the near future,
including Virgin Galactic.

Figure 2 - Richard Branson and his team

4 Other Promising Space Tourism Companies

Several other companies are competing with Virgin Galactic to make space tourism a reality in
the near future:
1. SpaceX
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of the best-known companies targeting space tourism,
and their ambitions go beyond what Virgin Galactic are proposing. SpaceX are hoping to
offer space tourism beyond earth orbit, with trips to the moon and back being a short-
term objective and trips to Mars being the longer-term goal.

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2. Blue Origin
Blue Origin is the competitor to Virgin Galactic when it comes to short-term, sub-
orbital space tourism. The American company, founded by Amazon President Jeff Bezos,
has designed a space vehicle called New Shepard, and is going to offer commercial space
travel for similar prices to what Virgin Galactic is charging.

3. Orion Span
Founded by Frank Bunger, Orion Span is an aerospace company, which is based
in California. It has extremely ambitious goals for its space tourism offering, including the
establishment of the Aurora Space Station in low earth orbit.

4. Boeing
Finally, Boeing have also made in-roads into the space tourism industry make an
1agreement with NASA. The agreement centres around Boeing creating a spacecraft
called the CST-100 Starliner, which is intended to transport people to space stations.

Figure 3 - Entrepreneurs that willing to space tourism

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