BEZOS VS BRANSON: THE BATTLE OF THE BILLIONAIRES (PART TWO)
Ahead of Virgin Galactic’s launch, the company copped some flack from the official Blue Origin Twitter account.
While Sir Richard’s craft maxes out at an altitude of 50 miles – the edge of space as defined by Nasa – Bezos’s tops the so-called Karman Line.
That’s the internationally recognised boundary of space about 62 miles above Earth.
In a tweet on July 9, Blue Origin dismissed Unity as nothing more than a “high altitude airplane” that doesn’t even technically reach space.
Speaking to The Sun last week following his successful spaceflight, Sir Ricard shot back.
He said his response to Blue Origin’s remarks was to “simply ignore them”.
“I have my astronaut wings,” Sir Richard said. “Nasa, who are the global authority on this, have always recognised 50 miles as the boundary of space. These are the rules we work under.
“Blue Origin’s initial spaceship may do a handful or two handfuls of seconds more in space than us, but our future spaceship will do the same.”
He added: “It really makes no difference to the overall experience that people have.
“I think if anybody looks at the pictures taken during the mission, they will see that we were firmly in space.”
Asked on Monday about the race with Branson, Bezos said: “There’s one person who was the first person in space, his name was [Russian cosmonaut] Yuri Gagarin, and that happened a long time ago.
“I think I’m number 570 or something, that’s where we are on this list, so this isn’t a competition, this is about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things there.”
