Branson’s Space Tourism Dream Remains Alive
Virgin Galactic—the California-based spaceflight subsidiary of archetypal billionaire-cool-guy-knight Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group—resumed flight-testing of its VSS Unity spacecraft on Wednesday, 26 April 2023. The non-powered, gliding test-flight occasioned the first instance in which Unity has flown independently of a carrier aircraft since July 2021, when the unique vessel rocketed Branson and Virgin Galactic employees Beth Moses, Sirisha Bandla, and Colin Bennett to an altitude of approximately 278,900-feet—albeit not without consequence.