British entrepreneur Richard Branson flew to the edge of space and back, making him the first person to fly to the edge of space in a rocket plane that he himself funded. The flight was likely an attempt to overshadow blue origins’ flight on the twentieth, in which Jeff Bezos aims to be a crewmember of the New Shepard, their rocket.
Branson’s plane reached 55 miles over the earth’s surface, before gliding down to land on a runway in New Mexico. This makes Branson technically the first Billionaire Astronaut by definition.
For more information about the flight, see this article by MSN.
Image from Joe Skipper from Reuters
