Richard Branson plans first space trip days before Jeff Bezos blasts off

Richard Branson plans to fly to space on July 11, days before a similar journey by fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. The shares of Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings surged.

The VSS Unity spacecraft will also carry three Virgin Galactic employees and two pilots from the launch site in New Mexico, according to a company statement Thursday. Bezos is planning a trip to space July 20 from nearby West Texas aboard a rocket made by Blue Origin, the Amazon.com founder’s space company.

Branson’s suborbital flight would fulfill a longtime goal for the UK billionaire and Virgin Galactic, which he founded in 2004. The company recently completed data analysis from its last test flight on May 22, and concluded it was ready to evaluate the cabin experience, said CEO Michael Colglazier. Branson had his pick of which of two planned flights this summer he’d prefer to join.

“The foundation of it is: We’re ready,” Colglazier said in an interview. “There is nothing about a space race or ‘Who goes first?’ that played into this. We do our test flights when we’re ready to fly them.”

Branson will evaluate the “private astronaut experience,” the company said, as Virgin Galactic prepares to offer flights to well-heeled customers in 2022. The voyage this month will be similar to the test flight in May, in which the Unity flew to an altitude of more than 55 miles (89 kilometers).

“After more than 16 years of research, engineering, and testing, Virgin Galactic stands at the vanguard of a new commercial space industry, which is set to open space to humankind and change the world for good,” Branson said in the statement.