Everything you need to know about Richard Branson’s trip to space this weekend

(CNN Business) – Richard Branson You will boldly go where no space baron has gone before this Sunday, when you step into your rocket company’s supersonic space plane, Virgin galactic.

Branson’s brief pleasure trip has been in the works for more than two decades. He founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 with the goal of creating a winged spacecraft capable of carrying up to eight people, including two pilots and six passengers, on rocket-powered flights that reach more than 50 miles above Earth, which the US government. The US considers the limit set by outer space.

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, as the space plane is called, has conducted more than 20 test flights, three of which have reached the edge of space and turned five Virgin Galactic employees into astronauts. But Branson’s flight will make him the first billionaire founder of a space company to actually travel into space aboard a vehicle he helped finance.

The Branson flight will take off in the early hours of Sunday, July 11, weather permitting. Virgin Galactic to publish a live broadcast, which will be hosted by the comedian Stephen Colbert, as confirmed by a spokesperson to CNN, that same morning. Grammy-nominated singer Khalid will also debut a new song at the landing site following Branson’s long-awaited return, Rolling Stone reported.

CNN Business will also share the live stream and post a live blog with updates.

This is what you need to know before the big event.

Who will go?

Branson will bring three colleagues for the trip. Among them is it so:

• Beth Moses, She holds the title of Chief Astronaut Instructor at Virgin Galactic and will be responsible for the training of all future clients of the company. You have already flown into space in VSS Unity once, for a test flight in 2019. Moses, an aerospace engineer, will not just accompany the trip. You’ll make sure your fellow travelers are safe and that Virgin Galactic collects all the data it needs, because this flight will be a test flight after all.
• Colin Bennett, who is the company’s chief operations engineer. Bennett will help evaluate the overall experience and ensure that the cabin equipment is in good repair.
• Sirisha Bandla, Virgin Galactic vice president of government affairs and research. Bandla will be on board for science assignments. Virgin Galactic frequently flies experiments to take advantage of the microgravity environment, and on this flight Bandla will be in charge of a University of Florida research project involving the handling of “hand-held tubes,” according to the company.

Virgin Galactic says Branson’s job will be to use his “observations derived from his flight training and space flight experience to improve the journey of all future astronaut customers,” according to the company.

Welcome Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett, and Beth Moses – our expert crew members joining @richardbranson on our # Unity22 test flight. Watch LIVE this Sunday at https://t.co/5UalYT7Hjb. @SirishaBandla @VGChiefTrainer pic.twitter.com/F4ZrGnH3vo

– Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) July 5, 2021

What will happen?

When most people think of space flight, they think of an astronaut circling the Earth, floating in space, for at least a few days.

That’s not what Branson will do at VSS Unity, which is the only operational SpaceShipTwo spacecraft Virgin Galactic has in its arsenal, although the company is building others.

The flight path of the VSS Unity is a wild ride, roughly set. Instead of taking off vertically from a launch pad like most rockets, the space plane takes off from a runway near Virgin Galactic’s “spaceport” in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Sunday morning. (The old town of Hot Springs, New Mexico, changed its name to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, as part of a 1950s publicity stunt for a radio show, and the name has stuck ever since.)

The VSS Unity will be attached to a huge mothership, called the WhiteKnightTwo, which looks like two elegant jets joined at the tips of its wings. It takes about 45 minutes for the mothership to travel the path and slowly ascend with the VSS Unity to about 15,000 meters. Then, when the pilots give the go-ahead, the SpaceShipTwo breaks free from between the two fuselages of the WhiteKnightTwo and ignites its rocket engine, rising straight up and roaring above the speed of sound.

The VSS Unity is a suborbital space plane, which means that it will not be fast enough to escape Earth’s gravity. Instead, it will launch at more than three times the speed of sound, about 3,700 kilometers per hour, more than 80 kilometers above the ground. At the top of the flight path, Branson and his companions will briefly experience weightlessness. It’s like an expanded version of the weightlessness you experience when you hit the top of a roller coaster, just before gravity pulls the car – or, in Branson’s case – the space plane down to the ground.

After a minute, the engine shuts down and the spacecraft and passengers are suspended in microgravity, while the SpaceShipTwo rotates on its belly, offering passengers panoramic views of Earth and the black void on the surface.

To conclude the trip, the SpaceShipTwo uses a system called “feathering” to raise its wings, imitating the shape of a badminton shuttlecock., to reorient the vehicle as it begins to fall back to Earth. He then lowers his wings as he glides back onto the airstrip.

A group of journalists will be able to attend the launch. CNN Business will post live updates here and will host live television coverage.

How is this different from what SpaceX and Blue Origin do?

Bezos’ Blue Origin took a very different approach to its suborbital space tourism rocket. The company’s New Shepard vehicle is a capsule and rocket system that takes off vertically from a launch pad, sending passengers on a dizzying 11-minute flight over 100 kilometers high before the capsule deploys parachutes to do so. descend gently.

But when the companies go commercial, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will be direct competitors. Both are targeting the wealthiest demographic hungry for thrills, willing to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to experience supersonic shock and a few minutes of weightlessness.

Elon Musk, the other billionaire from space, runs a very different operation than the one Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will introduce this month.

First of all, SpaceX builds orbital rockets. Orbital rockets need to accumulate enough energy to reach at least 17,000 miles per hour, or what is known as orbital velocity, which essentially gives a spacecraft enough energy to keep circling the Earth instead of being immediately pulled down by gravity. Here’s how SpaceX can put satellites into orbit or transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Although Branson’s other company, Virgin Orbit, has put a rocket into orbit, and Bezos’ Blue Origin plans to get there with a rocket called New Glenn, neither company has made headlines or caused as much sensation in the world. the space sector like SpaceX.

What risks are there?

Space travel is historically fraught with danger. Although the risks are not necessarily astronomical in the case of Branson’s excursion into suborbital space, since Virgin Galactic has spent most of the last decade conducting test flights with its space planes.

However, every time a human gets on a rocket, there are risks, and Branson seems to have decided that, for him, it is worth it.

“You have to remember that Virgin Galactic has people on every space flight … The fact that you are willing to fly with those people shows confidence,” Branson said to Rachel Craneby CNN Business. “I think the least the founder of the company can do is go up and fly with his people.”