By Nneka Nwogwugwu
A British Billionaire, Richard Branson, on Sunday, took off from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel bound for the edge of space, a voyage he hopes will lift the nascent space tourism industry off the ground.
A massive carrier plane made a horizontal take-off from Spaceport, New Mexico at around 8:40 am Mountain Time (1440 GMT) and will ascend for around an hour to an altitude of 50,000 feet (15 kilometers).
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The mothership will then drop a rocket-powered spaceplane called VSS Unity, which will ignite its engine and ascend at Mach 3 beyond 50 miles (80 kilometers) of altitude, which marks the boundary of space according to the United States.
Branson is also aiming to one up Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by winning the race to be the first tycoon to cross the final frontier in a ship built by a company he founded.
Several tourists journeyed to the International Space Station in the 2000s, but on Russian rockets.
Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, but the dream almost came to an end in 2014 when an in-flight accident caused the death of a pilot, considerably delaying the program.
