Richard Branson, world-famous businessman and founder of all things Virgin just achieved his life-long dream: Flying to space.
He did so on a Virgin Galactic rocket plane, which took off for a 1.5 hour mission that will see him reach the altitude at the edge of space where the sky turns black and the earth’s curves become visible.
Branson did so as a proof of concept, as he plans to make the experience available to paying customers aboard next year.
Branson first announced his intention to travel to space through a space pane in 2004, announcing in 2007 that it would be a commercial service.
It hasn’t been easy.
Watch Virgin Galactic’s full stream below:
There was a fatal crash during a development flight in 2014, turning the endeavor into the longest and most difficult of his career.
“I’ve wanted to go to space since I was a kid, and I want to enable hopefully hundreds of thousands of other people over the next 100 years to be able to go to space,” Sir Richard said to the the BBC
“And why shouldn’t they go to space? Space is extraordinary; the Universe is magnificent. I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it.”
Watch NASA’s full stream below:
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