Branson and crew reach space, return in runway landing

I think that what's most impressive is seeing a billionaire put his money where his mouth is. The rich can live a life with near zero risk and live in absolute luxury for a longer than average life span. Or you can do things like this.

The launch event was revealing in itself. From NASA to SpaceX to Virgin, there is a huge shift in the launch coverage. Today's event was for the large part an ad for future passengers and I suspect that it was due to the rather "routine-looking" take off and landing. Despite the fact that this was path-breaking, the natural theatre of a launch was missing and had to be created by artificial means with the colorful space suits, the music launch and so on. In a way, this is great. It makes it very likely that we will have thousands of "astronauts" in the not too distant future and scheduled flights to space.

&gt; If today&#x27;s flight reaches space successfully it will set a record: there will be 16 humans in space simultaneously for the first time ever.<p>I hope Moore&#x27;s law applies to this!

I think that what&#x27;s rubbing so many people the wrong way in this thread isn&#x27;t the technical accomplishment. That was <i>incredible</i>. On the other hand, the self-congratulatory rhetoric was <i>thick</i>. While I was watching it, I said to myself &quot;their video probably isn&#x27;t working because they knocked the antenna out of alignment when they pat themselves on the back so hard.&quot;<p>It didn&#x27;t help that the narration was just awful. When the stream buffer finally started playing and we got a mashed up snippet of Branson talking, she (the narrator&#x2F;commentator) commented that it was late because it was really far away... what!? I know it was off the top of her head but that&#x27;s just stupid.<p>So: Congrats on the technical accomplishment, but the rest of the dog and pony show made it look like the worlds most expensive carnival ride.

&gt; Branson, in remarks from his Virgin Galactic flight on Sunday, said the spaceflight was the “complete experience of a lifetime” shortly after the spacecraft successfully took off over New Mexico.<p>The most striking thing about this is not the idea of suborbital flight (not new), nor the involvement of a private company (also not new), nor the idea of a spacecraft launching from a plane (also not new).<p>What&#x27;s new and mind-blowing is that space travel can be an experience that people will pay for. You&#x27;re not taking a suborbital flight, you&#x27;re becoming an astronaut.<p>As the initial novelty of &quot;being to space&quot; wears off, there will be demand (and money) to fund ever more unusual space experiences.<p>At some point, it will become clear that there&#x27;s not just one or two space travel companies, but a space travel industry.<p>Then what?

Based on the comments in this thread, this is the most I&#x27;ve ever been disappointed in the HN community.<p>What Branson &amp; his team did today was <i>incredible</i> and will pay off in spades for the future of humanity.<p>I&#x27;d rather live in a world with folks like Branson instead of a world made up of the astonishingly short-sighted naysayers here.

Don&#x27;t forget, this is not just billionaires and their toys, it&#x27;s about Democratizing Space Tourism[0]. You have to admire the billionaires who act as guinea pigs in these endeavors. Soon people with a lot less money than Branson&#x2F;Bezos will be able to fly to space and see the curvature of the globe, all thanks to the initial experiments by explorers like Branson&#x2F;Bezos.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.parabolicarc.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;05&#x2F;08&#x2F;democratizing-space-one-billionaire-at-a-time-the-return-of-space-tourism&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.parabolicarc.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;05&#x2F;08&#x2F;democratizing-space-o...</a>

Branson’s decades-long passion and perseverance is an inspiration

This is amazing and inspirational engineering.<p>Can they scale this up to taking humans &amp; large payloads to orbit? It seems hard to run this business sustainably on millionaire tourists, 4-minute science experiments and ads. Anyone have an idea of what their business plan is?

Wow, some of the negativity in the comments here astounds me.

Congrats to the team but what a rushed job. The live stream was a disaster and I’m sure it had to do with Branson vs Bezos. It was so amateur and commercial. I bet Bezos will demand a far better demo of the new spaceport service.

Proof that space travel is easier than Formula 1

At peak altitude when the video&#x2F;audio link failed, the commentator, referring to the lack of comments from Branson:<p>“We’ll be sure to capture his magical words and share them with the world when they are available.”<p>Had a hard time keeping my breakfast down. Geez. Seems they should have purchased time on the Starlink sat network for comms.<p>This was followed by:<p>“Remember the day, remember where you are, remember who you shared this with, and remember the name Virgin Galactic, because today, space is Virgin territory.”<p>If over-hype leads to business success, I guess they are on their way.<p>The professional, highly trained pilot&#x2F;astronauts were referred to as Dave and Mike. Every mention of Branson was Sir Richard Branson.<p>Amazing tech, but $250K for 6 minutes of weightlessness? Not exactly democratizing space. It might work out eventually, but hard to see the payoff for the massive investment to date.

Can that kind spaceship design get orbit in future or is this design dead end without somekind breaktrought in material and rocket science?

Is it ever mentioned how much pollution is generated per flight? I can’t see suborbital space travel becoming common if each flight emits millions of pounds of GHG.<p>With the rise of environmental awareness and even talks of introducing environmental crimes, I hope these companies address these problems before becoming generally available to the public.

I don&#x27;t know much about this project at all and that will be illustrated well with my following question. What are we talking about as far as going into space? This craft resembles a passenger plane more than a rocket.

Didn’t Branson already go to space in one of his Virgin Galactic craft years ago?

Is that really the crew? Or is this like a Milli Vanilli kind of thing?

I guess there&#x27;s really a slippery, spectrum definition of &quot;space.&quot; FL3300, FL2600, etc.<p>The Kármán line (FL3300) could be considered &quot;space&quot; since it&#x27;s roughly where aerodynamic lift is no longer possible.

Aren&#x27;t we all so glad that a &quot;billionaires&quot; challenge was won.

I can&#x27;t wait for that new wave of rich people telling us how &quot;earth is beautiful from above&quot; and how us peasants should &quot;stop making kids and eat burgers&quot; that they can continue jumping in their little rocket and enjoy being above us all.

Branson got infinitesimally closer to the stars and supposedly achieved his dream, although the 50 years spent on other businesses would seem to indicate he took a rather circuitous route to that dream. His pyramid is made of assets and holdings, rather than the sandstone of the ancient Egyptians, but we shall see whose monument to narcissism outlasts the other.

Why is this even remotely interesting in light of the fact that Scaled launched pretty much this same aircraft to a higher altitude, 18 years ago?

I get that we&#x27;re all excited about space, this one rated a &quot;meh&quot; for me.<p>SpaceX is doing more ambitious things and already launched people into space.

It is not clear who this benefits. A lot of commentary is cheering on science which is noble, but what exactly does “faster flights around the world” really help?<p>I think most people can’t think of situation for the near future that a rocket would help solve. The other side is people wishing money was better spent on issues of the world.<p>I can’t help but admit it is a bit solution in search of a problem.

It concerns me that we are so celebratory about these hugely energy wasting vanity projects.

Imagine the heat waves when space travel becomes more accessible. 10 years ago I would have celebrated this because it is an incredible technical achievement. But today, I just have a hard time celebrating such flagrant acts of pollution.

I am really surprised these billionares do not get more bad press for taking their greed and selfishness to suborbital levels!