The first man to make an orbit around the Earth, April 1961, was Jurij Gagarin, and we all remember him, or at least he is often remembered in the media. The second was German Titov, August 1961, also the Soviet Union, but practically nobody remembers him, even if he did more and better.
This must be the thought that gnaws at the mind of Sir Richard Branson, the patron of the Virgin empire which also includes the Virgin Galactic space part, since last Monday 5 June, when his arch competitor, Jeff Bezos, more billionaire than him, has announced that on July 20, the date of the first human landing on the Moon 52 years ago, he will go into space with his own vehicle, a rocket and capsule designed and tested already 15 times by his company, Blue Origin.
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He probably wondered why he, who first embraced space tourism years ago, developed the SpaceShip Two, the very elegant plane that carries the White Knight rocket plane under it, the White Knight, capable of going to limits of the atmosphere, where the space begins, because he, we said, must be the second tourist of the space and therefore pass in the footnotes of future history books, while Bezos will have an entire chapter dedicated to him.
It is known that these super rich, who have done practically everything humanly thinkable these days – the third being SpaceX’s Elon Musk – at this point wish to go down in history and for sure space exploits are the best way.
For this reason, the rumors about the comeback in the Cesarini area of Branson, which began as a gossip from an important and quoted American technology blog, have neither been confirmed nor denied by Virgin: Virgin Galactic’s schedule of suborbital flights is in any case revised in order to to be able to take Branson into space as the first space tourist. The set date seems as significant as that of July 20: July 4, American Independence Day, a bit kitschy to be honest, given that our daring billionaire is English and so is Sir, Baronet, for the help given to the British economy from its companies, from gyms to aviation music.