Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Launching First Commercial Space Flight

Richard Branson‘s Virgin Galactic is gunning to accomplish an incredible feat in the world of commercial space travel — and if successful, puts him on a short list with the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Branson’s company is having its first commercial launch Thursday, dubbed Galactic 01. The VSS Unity is taking off from New Mexico attached to a carrier plane, eventually detaching and soaring about 3 times the speed of sound above the earth before coming back down.

Despite the commercial aspect, the trip is more about business than pleasure — the space vessel will carry members of the Italian Air Force and a research engineer, collecting data while airborne.

As we reported, the VSS Unity turned Branson into the first billionaire in space in 2021 when he and a handful of others went into sub-orbital space … paving the way for Thursday’s big milestone.

The view inside the vessel was almost as cool as what they were seeing on the outside — especially the look on Branson’s face when the Unity shot toward space!