Virgin Galactic is allowed to fly tourists into space

Billionaire Richard Branson is allowed to take tourists into space with his space company Virgin Galactic. The US aviation authority FAA granted the appropriate permission, such as Virgin Galactic announced. It evaluated data from the test flight of the Virgin spaceplane "VSS Unity" last month. The spaceship had flown to the space limit in June with two pilots and returned safely to Earth. The SpaceShipTwo has space for a total of six passengers. Branson himself has also flown into space. Virgin Galactic chief executive Michael Colglazier said the FAA's permission was encouraging. The first fully manned test flight is now planned for the summer. With the FAA approval, the race between three billionaires for tourist flights into space is heating up further. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wants to be the first non-astronaut to fly into space with a rocket from his company Blue Origin on July 20th. It is unclear whether Virgin Galactic Bezos will now steal the show. The rumor mill is boiling violently: Allegedly, Branson wants to beat Bezos and set off into space on July 4th - 16 days in advance. The third billionaire who is also reaching for his tears is Tesla boss Elon Musk with his company SpaceX. However, he shouldn't get in the way of the two. So far he has only announced that he will start a first flight with space tourists by the end of the year. So far, astronauts have already flown to the International Space Station ISS with SpaceX.