Richard Branson set to leave Earth: What you need to know about the billionaire space race
The last century’s space race was a competition between the world’s great powers and a test of their ideologies. It would prove to be a synecdoche of the entire Cold War between the capitalist United States and the socialist Soviet Union.
The starting pistol in the race to the future was fired in 1961 when President John F Kennedy committed to “achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” and it ended with a US victory on 24 July 1969 when the crew of the Apollo 11 mission splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
There are no such stakes in today’s race. The values of the future aren’t in question, merely the egos of three billionaires. One of these men is launching his private spacecraft off the planet on Sunday. Another follows suit soon after.
So here’s how they compare and what you need to know:
Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX have all designed their own spacecraft
How far can the billionaires’ rockets go?
“My mum taught me to never give up and to reach for the stars,” said Sir Richard Branson announcing that he was going to be among the first people his spaceflight company launches on a mission.
Unfortunately, not only will Virgin Galactic’s mission fall short of the stars, the two-and-a-half hour mission will also fall short of space, at least according to the internationally agreed definition.
Sir Richard Branson is the billionaire owner of Virgin Galactic
VSS Unity is a spaceplane (perhaps just a plane?) that launches in mid-air from the belly of a carrier aircraft at an altitude of about 15km, and then flies up to an altitude of about 80km, allowing the passengers to feel nearly weightless for approximately six minutes and glimpse the curvature of the Earth.
The problem for Sir Richard is that the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) defines the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space as 100km above Earth’s mean sea level, the so-called Karman Line, 20km higher than he is going to travel.
VSS Unity technically will not actually enter space
The definition of the edge of space is a bit of a challenge. Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t suddenly end but becomes progressively thinner at greater altitudes. In very simple terms, physicist Theodore von Karman’s solution was to define the edge of space as the highest point at which an aircraft could fly without reaching orbital velocity.
While Karman himself and the FAI regards this altitude as 100km, Sir Richard has the US Air Force and NASA on his side. They both place the boundary of space at 80km above mean sea level, partially because putting it at 100km would complicate issues regarding surveillance aircraft and reconnaissance satellites for the US – although the Department of Defence subscribes to the FAI definition.
It’s not clear whether this definition is covered by the small print of Virgin Galactic’s customer tickets, but ultimately the company aims to be operating multiple space tourism flights a year, and already has more than 600 customers for the $250,000 (£189,000) seats – including Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Jeff Bezos is the billionaire owner of Blue Origin. Pic: AP
“Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space. On 20 July, I will take that journey with my brother,” said Jeff Bezos, announcing his seat on a journey to the edge of space.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is capable of actually making it there, with a maximum achieved altitude of above 100km, but how high it will bring its four passengers hasn’t yet been confirmed.
These passengers will be Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, a mystery customer who paid $28m (£20m) for the seat in an auction, and 82-year-old Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk, a woman who had astronaut training in the 1960s but was denied the chance to go into space because of her gender.
While the mission will be scooped to launch by Virgin Galactic, by inviting Wally Funk it has managed to scoop Branson on getting a famous victim of gender injustice into space – she had previously put money down to fly with Virgin Galactic.
Jeff Bezos invited Wally Funk to join his spaceflight. Pic: Blue Origin/AP
It will take three minutes to take the passengers up to the required altitude, at which point they will have three minutes more in which to enjoy their sudden near-weightlessness. They’ll be allowed to unbuckle their seatbelts and float around, as well as examine the curvature of the Earth through one of the capsule’s windows. Just over 10 minutes after launch, the spacecraft will land back on Earth.
The 20 July flight will fittingly occur on the anniversary of the moon landings in 1969, but unlike the Apollo missions there will be no human piloting the modules. Instead, Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft is completely autonomous and will follow a programmed mission timeline before parachuting back to Earth.
The company has said that it expects to sell seats for more tourism flights in the future, but it isn’t clear how this will happen and the tickets for New Shepard are yet to go on general sale.
Elon Musk is the billionaire owner of SpaceX. Pic:NBC/YouTube
“I want to die on Mars – just not on impact,” Elon Musk once quipped, although he hasn’t announced his immediate intention to travel into space at all.
Unlike both Bezos and Branson, Musk’s private spaceflight company, SpaceX, has a long and successful history of launching payloads way beyond the 100km mark.
SpaceX has announced it will be launching an all-civilian mission into orbit by the end of the year, with the passengers actually orbiting around the planet for up to four days before returning to Earth.
All four crew seats on the mission have been paid for by Jared Isaacman, the founder of Shift4 Payments, who has declined to reveal the costs.
Isaacman is donating two of the seats to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, with one being given to a staff member there, and another intended to be raffled off to a member of the public. He hopes to raise $200m (£145m) for the hospital, alongside a $100m (£72m) donation of his own.
Elon Musk hasn’t mentioned flying on this mission himself, although he has long articulated a plan to travel to Mars, plans that have been described as a dangerous delusion by Britain’s chief astrophysicist Lord Martin Rees.
SpaceX’s images of the terraforming of Mars. Pic: SpaceX
Back in 2016, Musk outlined his vision of building a colony on Mars “in our lifetimes” – with the first rocket propelling humans to the Red Planet by 2025.
For many years the company used an image of the Martian surface being terraformed (turned Earth-like) in its promotional material. However, a NASA-sponsored study published in 2018 dismissed these plans as impossible with today’s technology.
Recently Musk has tweeted he believed it was “possible to make a self-sustaining city on Mars by 2050, if we start in five years” but as of yet, SpaceX has not planned any missions to the planet.
World
‘They’re terrified of the possible results’: US considers cutting funds to notorious Israeli army unit
The drive into the village of Jiljiliya is not what you expect on the West Bank. Imposing mansions line the route, with grand gates and lavish decorations.
That’s because this is where Palestinian Americans return to build their dream homes after years of hard work in the land of opportunity.
Like Omar Assad who came back after 45 years in Milwaukee. But for him, retirement was neither long nor happy. It was cut brutally short one freezing night in January 2022.
The body of Omar Assad at his funeral
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He was returning from a game of cards when he was stopped at a makeshift checkpoint set up by the notorious Israeli army unit, Netzah Yehuda.
The IDF says he did not cooperate so the 78-year-old was detained with force.
Mraweh Mahmoud was with him.
“They took us down from the car and pushed me by the head,” he told Sky News. “The soldier was standing there and put an M16 in my head and said now I’ll shoot you.”
Mr Assad was tied up, gagged and blindfolded, Mr Mahmoud said, and forced to lie next to him. When the soldiers eventually left Mr Mahmoud realised Mr Assad was dead.
“I took his jacket off his head, I checked there’s no pulse, I shouted Omar, Omar,” he said.
Mraweh Mahmoud demonstrates how a Netzah Yehuda soldier pointed a gun at his head
Palestinian doctors say Mr Assad died in freezing temperatures of a stress-induced heart attack. An Israeli military report condemned the soldiers’ “moral failure and poor decision-making”.
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Netzah Yehuda has a fearsome reputation
No link between death and soldiers’ errors, military prosecutors say
Netzah Yehuda’s battalion commander was reprimanded and two officers were dismissed but Israeli military prosecutors decided against pursuing criminal charges because they said there was no link between the errors made by soldiers and Mr Assad’s death.
But now the unit the soldiers came from is expected to be singled out by the US government and cut off from American funding, in the first-ever such move against any part of the Israeli military.
Reports claim the US State Department will apply the so-called Leahy Law against the unit, which prohibits US assistance to foreign military units guilty of gross human rights violations when their government fails to take sufficient action.
Netzah Yehuda mixes soldiering with religion
Why has Netzah Yehuda become infamous?
The Netzah Yehuda battalion was set up to help ultra-orthodox Jews serve in the army. It mixes religion and soldiering. But in its ranks are also elements of extremist settler groups.
It has become infamous, implicated in one case of alleged abuse of Palestinians after another, many of which its soldiers have filmed on their own phones. Its soldiers have been prosecuted for human rights violations and accused of unlawful killings, electrocution, torture and sexual assault.
Israel’s government has fought a rearguard action against the looming US action.
Netzah Yehuda has been linked to human rights abuses
Its prime minister called the prospect absurd and its defence minister Yoav Galant showed solidarity with the battalion’s soldiers this week saying “no one in the world can teach us about morals and values”.
But one organisation of ex-soldiers opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories says the Israeli government knows this could be just the beginning of action against its military.
Ori Givati from the NGO Breaking the Silence
‘They’re terrified of the possible results’
Ori Givati from the NGO Breaking the Silence told Sky News: “They understand that this might open the Pandora’s box of what the occupation really is, and how it looks like to occupy millions with the military.
“And if that Pandora’s box will be opened and it is starting to open in recent months, I think they’re terrified of the possible results because they want to continue to occupy.”
Back in Jilijilya, Mr Assad’s family welcomes reports America will act against the soldiers they blame for his death but say that’s not enough – they want them brought to justice too.
Nazmia, Mr Assad’s widow, said: “God willing it will be good if they do this, but also punish them like what they did with him, arrest them and fire them from their positions.”
World
Israel-Hamas war: Hostage’s parents tell him ‘stay strong’ after video shows him alive but missing part of arm
The parents of an Israeli hostage have told him “we love you, stay strong, survive” after he appeared with part of his arm missing in a video released by Hamas.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped at the Nova musical festival when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
The video shows him with his lower left arm missing; witnesses said it was blown off when he helped throw grenades out of a shelter where people were hiding.
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He reportedly used his shirt as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding, but was captured.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin (middle) was one of over 200 people kidnapped. Pic: Reuters
Clearly under duress in the undated video, the 23-year-old criticises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, saying they should be “ashamed” for not securing the hostages’ release.
He also claims Israeli bombings have killed “about 70 detainees like me” and that the rest are living in an “underground hell without water, food, or sun”.
Mr Goldberg-Polin, who wears a red shirt and sits against a plain white wall, finishes with an appeal to his parents, telling them “stay strong” and “I love you so much, and miss you so much”.
His parents responded to Wednesday’s video by filming their own emotional response.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Jon Polin says hearing his son for the first time in more than 200 days is “overwhelming”.
“We are relieved to see him alive but we are also concerned about his health and wellbeing as well as that of all the other hostages, and all of those suffering in this region,” he says.
Mr Polin calls for the countries involved in negotiations to “be brave, lean in, seize this moment and get a deal done to reunite all of us with our loved ones and end the suffering in this region”.
His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, stares resolutely into the camera and tells him: “Hersh, if you can hear his, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days… I am telling you – we are telling you – we love you, stay strong, survive.”
Rachel Goldberg holding photos of her son a few weeks after the October attack. Pic: Reuters
Friends and family continue to raise awareness of his captivity. Pic: Reuters
The 23-year-old was born in California but moved to Jerusalem with his family when he was younger.
He was among about 250 Israelis and foreigners kidnapped in the initial Hamas attack, which also killed around 1,200 people.
Some hostages were freed in a deal last year, but more than 100 are still unaccounted for and there is huge pressure in Israel for the government to bring them home.
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Baby saved from womb of dying mother
Israel’s aim to wipe out Hamas has so far killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authority.
Hundreds of thousands are also said to be on the brink of starvation and have been forced to flee the violence.
Fears are growing that a ground assault on the southern city of Rafah – where more than a million people are sheltering – is imminent after Mr Netanyahu said Israel was “moving ahead” with its plans.
Deep below Jerusalem, Israeli doctors are preparing for the worst.
Sky News has been given exclusive access to an underground hospital where they are expanding capacity in case the current conflict becomes much worse.
In a bunker below the Herzog Medical Centre, the number of beds has been increased to 350 – with 100 on the way.
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“Because it’s built to withstand both biological and chemical attacks,” Dr Yehezkel Caine told Sky News as we entered the complex, “we have an airlock which is built of two separate sets of blast doors”.
Dr Yehezkel Caine says there’s an unprecedented threat to Israel’s people
Beyond they have installed a whole new level of wards below the existing underground hospital, ripping out a logistics floor and installing more beds and equipment.
The bunkers would be activated should other hospitals closer to the front need evacuating.
They are planning for worst-case scenarios here like an all-out war with Hezbollah.
“The hospitals in the north will be overwhelmed with casualties and they themselves will come under fire, in which case they would have to evacuate their patients to the centre of the country, the same as we did in the first weeks of the war in the south,” said Dr Caine.
He and his staff know the 7 October attack last year by Hamas and Iran‘s missile and drone barrage earlier this month have changed everything for the people of Israel.
“For the civilian population since the war of independence we’ve never been in a situation where the threat to the civilian population has been as great,” he said.
Two sets of blast doors form an airlock against biological and chemical attacks
Above ground, the Herzog Medical Centre continues with its peacetime specialisms.
It has Israel’s largest ventilator unit, treating adults and children, but also excels in psycho-trauma treatment and geriatric rehabilitation.
Many of those suffering PTSD from the trauma in this conflict are treated here.
Read more from Sky News:
Parents of hostage in Hamas video tell him ‘stay strong’
Israel bulldozed mass graves at Gaza hospital
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
If Jerusalem itself is attacked, the hospital can evacuate even the most vulnerable to the bunkers below in just a few hours.
The bunkers can be entirely sealed off for 96 hours in what’s called a Noah’s Ark procedure.
The Herzog drills its staff regularly. Preparing for a reality it hopes will never come. But events on the northern border are looking ominous.
Israel has launched one of its biggest bombardments yet of Lebanon’s Hezbollah after multiple shelling of northern Israeli communities.
The lower-level war continues with the ever-present danger of escalation into something much bigger.
If it comes, doctors in Jerusalem’s biggest underground hospital say they’ll be ready.
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