New Space Race: Did Richard Branson really travel to 'space', and how the flight stacks up against Jeff Bezos'

In this photo provided by Virgin Galactic, the VSS Unity reaches a speed of Mach 3, and a space altitude of 53.5 miles above the Earth on July 11, 2021. (Image: Virgin Galactic via AP)

Billionaire Richard Branson flew to the edge of space on July 11 on board the ‘Unity’ rocket ship his company, Virgin Galactic, had been developing for around two decades.

Branson, nearly 71 years old, and five crewmates from his space tourism company reached an altitude of about 88 kilometres over the New Mexico desert in the United States. The altitude was enough for them to experience three-four minutes of weightlessness and see Earth’s curvature before safely gliding back to the company’s Spaceport America facility.

“Seventeen years of hard work to get us this far,” Branson said as he congratulated his team aboard the Unity, the sleek white rocket ship.

The flight’s primary goal was to boost confidence in Virgin Galactic as the company plans to start taking customers on short space journeys from next year.

With this mission, Branson became the first person to reach space in his own spacecraft and beat fellow billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by nine days.

However, many have been left asking – did Branson really go to space?

Blue Origin, the sub-orbital spaceflight services company owned by Bezos, effectively claimed on July 9 that Virgin Galactic’s space flight doesn’t travel to altitudes “defined” as space.

In a series of tweets, Blue Origin said its ‘New Shepard’ spacecraft was designed to fly above the Kármán line.

The Kármán line is the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space as defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. It's set at 100 kms (62 miles) above mean sea level. According to the Bezos-led company, space begins at that 100-km mark for “96 percent of the world’s population”.

Virgin Galactic says that its flights can soar at “nearly” 3 lakh feet (57 miles) in altitude. That doesn't touch the Kármán line. Yet, it is to be noted that this altitude is still higher than what NASA and the United States government defined as the point where space begins – 50 miles above mean sea level.

Bezos has chosen July 20 as his launch date. It marks the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He will be accompanied into space by his brother, Mark, the winner of a $28 million charity auction, and Wally Funk, one of the last surviving members of the Mercury 13 project, who was chosen as his “honoured guest”.

Funk is one of the 13 female pilots who had passed the same tests as NASA's original Mercury 7 astronauts in the early 1960s. However, they were barred from spaceflight because they were women.