{"id":19488,"date":"2016-01-22T18:44:14","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T10:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/virgin-galactics-richard-branson-ribs-space-billionaires-amid-blue-origin-buzz\/"},"modified":"2016-01-22T18:44:14","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T10:44:14","slug":"virgin-galactics-richard-branson-ribs-space-billionaires-amid-blue-origin-buzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/virgin-galactics-richard-branson-ribs-space-billionaires-amid-blue-origin-buzz\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Galactic\u2019s Richard Branson ribs space billionaires amid Blue Origin buzz"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_224721\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-224721\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-224721\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/1601022-branson-630x424.jpg\" alt=\"Richard Branson\" width=\"630\" height=\"424\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/1601022-branson-630x424.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/1601022-branson-768x516.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/1601022-branson-1240x834.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-224721\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Richard Branson says he\u2019s in a friendly rivalry with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture may have done another flight test, and Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX is making waves with its&nbsp;rocket progress&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;but don\u2019t forget about Richard Branson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur spaceship comes back and lands on wheels. Theirs don\u2019t,\u201d the billionaire founder of Virgin Galactic said during a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. \u201cThere\u2019ll be banter like this&nbsp;which will take place,&nbsp;and that\u2019s good. People will have a choice of which spaceships they want to use to go to space.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin is developing spaceships for suborbital as well as orbital trips. In November, Blue Origin\u2019s uncrewed New Shepard test vehicle went into space for the first time and made a successful vertical landing. If all goes well, the company could be flying passengers in two years.<\/p>\n<p>Today there was a torrent of tweets about a possible Blue Origin flight test. First, the Federal Aviation Administration alerted aviators to stay away from the airspace over the company\u2019s test range in West Texas.&nbsp;Then, around&nbsp;midday today, the restrictions were lifted. One Twitter user, Patrick Brown, went so far as to post a picture of what appears to be a rocket trail leading up from the company\u2019s test range in West Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin&nbsp;kept mum. \u201cUnfortunately, Blue Origin doesn\u2019t have anything to contribute at this time,\u201d&nbsp;the company said in a statement emailed to GeekWire.<\/p>\n<p><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" class=\"\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden; width: 0px; height: 0px; display: block; flex-grow: 1;\" title=\"X Post\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=b0yle&amp;dnt=true&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;features=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%3D%3D&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=690601166594449408&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.geekwire.com%2F2016%2Fvirgin-galactics-richard-branson-ribs-blue-origin-jeff-bezos-elon-musk-spacex%2F&amp;sessionId=5ba19a25f1af22a9d476a31e5353610d38106cb0&amp;siteScreenName=geekwire&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=6a3ad42b224df%3A1778106238597&amp;width=550px\" data-tweet-id=\"690601166594449408\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\" data-twitter-extracted-i1782805033202847987=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">.@blueorigin View of the West Texas sky this morning. #blueorigin pic.twitter.com\/c4jhUQxGWw<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Patrick Brown (@phhbrown) January 22, 2016<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Also today, SpaceX unveiled a video&nbsp;that showed&nbsp;its Dragon 2 capsule going through an important&nbsp;thruster&nbsp;test. The five-second hover marked one small step toward the goal of having future&nbsp;Dragons touch down on a landing pad, and eventually on Mars.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX made a splash last December when the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket put a cluster of satellites in orbit, and then&nbsp;aced an on-land touchdown in Florida.&nbsp;Last week, another Falcon 9 almost pulled off the world\u2019s first successful rocket landing on an oceangoing platform. If all goes well, SpaceX could be flying astronauts for NASA by the end of next year.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"icon-quotes-left\"><\/span>&nbsp;You need competition, and the public will benefit from the three of us getting out there and competing.<span class=\"icon-quotes-right\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, is trying to follow up on 2004\u2019s successful flights of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane. The company suffered a fatal setback in 2014 when its SpaceShipTwo vehicle broke apart during a test flight, killing the co-pilot and injuring the pilot. A second SpaceShipTwo is due to be rolled out next month. If all goes well, paying passengers could be riding SpaceShipTwo into space in a couple of years.<\/p>\n<p>Branson told CNBC that his rivalry with the other two billionaires is good-natured. \u201cI\u2019m good friends with Elon,\u201d he said. \u201cJeff, I don\u2019t know enormously well. You need competition, and the public will benefit from the three of us getting out there and competing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an extra dimension to the competition between Branson and Musk: SpaceX has set up an operation in the Seattle area to develop satellites that could provide global Internet access. Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, is backing&nbsp;a rival effort led by OneWeb.<\/p>\n<p>Branson argued that SpaceShipTwo\u2019s horizontal-landing capability will give it an advantage for point-to-point suborbital space travel&nbsp;\u2013 for example, flying from Tokyo to Los Angeles in an hour. But to keep pace with SpaceX and Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic will eventually have to send something into outer space.<\/p>\n<p>The British billionaire acknowledged to CNBC that he was just telling his side of the story, rather than Bezos\u2019 or Musk\u2019s. \u201cIf you\u2019re interviewing them, they would give lots of reasons why they\u2019ve got advantages over us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s one more side of&nbsp;the space billionaire story yet to be told. Your move, Paul Allen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Branson says he\u2019s in a friendly rivalry with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. (Credit: Virgin Galactic) Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture may have done another flight test, and Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX is making waves with its&nbsp;rocket progress&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;but don\u2019t forget about Richard Branson. \u201cOur spaceship comes back and lands on wheels. Theirs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,291,1045,1046,1693,1973,316],"class_list":["post-19488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-commercial-space","tag-elon-musk","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-richard-branson","tag-spaceshiptwo","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}