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British billionaire businessman Richard Branson succeeded in a space tour test flight of about an hour aboard the spaceship he founded.
It was a flight ahead of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who are also focusing on the space tourism business, reports Jung Jun-hyung.
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Virgin Galactic's spaceship, Unity, is loaded into the mothership and soars into the sky.
After reaching an altitude of 13.6 km, the airship detaches from the mothership.
[3, 2, 1, airship separation, engine ignition.] The
separated airship flew at the supersonic speed of Mach 3 and reached an altitude of 88.5 km. I experienced a state of microgravity.
[Richard Branson / Founder of Virgin Galactic: Once a child who dreamed of looking at the stars, I became an adult looking at the beautiful Earth in a spaceship.]
The spaceship returned safely one hour after takeoff.
The 70-year-old British billionaire and founder of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson, became the first person to successfully test flight in the space tourism market called Star Wars by billionaires with this flight.
[Richard Branson / Founder of Virgin Galactic: As I have said many times, this is not a competition. I wish Jeff Bezos success. This morning, Elon Musk came to the dormitory and encouraged them.]
Virgin Galactic will start a full-scale space tour service from next year, and they have pre-ordered all 600 tickets at a price of 280 million won per ticket.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will personally experience space tourism on the 20th, and SpaceX, a space exploration company founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, will also take on an orbital flight around the Earth with four people on a spaceship in September.
(Video editing: Yonghwa Jung)