Sure we could drum up a no return policy for mother earth.

Where is Zachary Smith when you need him most?

That’s Doctor Zachary Smith, you bellicose bumpkin!

Just tell them (after they have taken off...) that they'll need to quarantine up there for 2 weeks before they can land anywhere on earth. After all, we are still in a pandemic, aren't we?

But not necessarily in one piece!

Whilst I appreciate your sentiment, don't you think there is more than enough junk up there already?

Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic... famous for the promise 'it'll be ready next year'

And..

Can I have some of the tax payers money, despite not paying any myself?

They rushed the Challenger launch as well due to artificial deadlines that overrode safety concerns. That turned out well.

...they take off at the same time and meet somewhere in space....and by meet I mean converging at several thousand mph.

Any billionaire could go to space easy. The feeling about all the underpaid workers, unpaid taxes burning behind you as you thrust yourself on a piece of metal, to show everyone how big of a billionaire you are.

I'd very much see those "heroes of capitalist revolution" to start a race into making lives of workers better and start paying taxes like small businesses do.

And managing it only 60years after a hero of the Soviet union did it first

If Amazon was allowed to run Gulags Prime...

Although Yuri did actually orbit and re-enter, not just zoom up 100km and fall back down.

Amazing when you think we went from Wright Brothers to Earth orbit in <60years and in another 60years we have gone from Sputnik to grocers being able to not really get to space

the peasants in their cardboard villages marvelled at the spectacle in the heavens.

Much discussion was heard around the dumpster fires…

The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

I hope all the flights go well and everyone returns safely to the earth. Maybe having briefly slipped the surly bonds of earth a brush with the face of god will change them a little....

They will not slip the bonds of earth. Last time humans managed that was in the Apollo program. We'll continue being stuck in this (gravity) well.

That's not sayin I don't share your sentiment, but one astronaut commented that this takes a couple of days: on the first day they pointed out their home regions, on the second their countries. On the third their continents until on the fourth they marveled at the fragile beauty of Earth. I cannot remember the exact quote, or who said it, but it seems like one should make our heads of state spend some weeks up there. Maybe at the same time, so they are forced to cooperate.

I don't think the term "early bird" is really applicable to either of these efforts, considering how long they've both been in development, sixteen or seventeen years, I believe. Better late than never, I guess.

That being said, personally I find the Virgin craft to be the much cooler vehicle, even if it doesn't go quite as high. New Shepard just seems a really uninspiring, play-it-safe design, boosting a capsule up and then landing it by parachute out in the sticks. Comparing that to a manually-flown rocket plane, air-launched from a fantastic-looking carrier aircraft, and landing the passengers back at the take-off site, I know which one I'd want to fly on. If I was the kind of absurdly rich git who's going to be making that choice.

>>>I know which one I'd want to fly on<<<

So do I, but SpaceX isn't taking passengers just yet!

100% agree, VG does look cooler than the flying dildo.

To be fair though, from the pics, the view looks to be much better on the Shepard so would you be going for the view or the T-shirt?

> Branson will be the first of the duo to take a flight

Yet both have been beaten to space by another billionaire: Charles Simonyi.He made it to the ISS in 2007, so has not just been on a up and down again flight, but orbited, visited the Space Station and then [1]did it again in 2009.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi#Spaceflights

half-price?

It's suborbital so all tickets are two-way.

The key difference is that the return trip is less comfortable on the cheap ones, although you do get a much better view.

more like sub-optimal then

Its Virgin, so it's bound to be a rail replacement bus service

(in the good ole days it would have been a shuttle... I'll get me coat...)

sold by dignitas?

I do hope that everybody survives, but is it too much to ask that everything that could possibly go wrong without loss of life does go wrong. It is best for problems to happen early in the bathtub curve, during the infant mortality phase rather than just a normal random failures. And having billionaires survive, as opposed to die, should make these things much safer faster.

The VG craft is probably similar risk to a helicopter flight, but Bezos is taking a far greater risk sitting on top of a controlled explosion. Spaceflight is not for people who need to buy life insurance

The virgin is still an air launched missile once it gets dropped form the carrier

In a way it's riskier, you are relying on the carrier aircraft not having a bad day as well as the rocket gizmo working.

That's one of the issues the Pegasus system had

"Unashamed showman Branson has tried to trump that, even if VSS Unity will not soar as high as the New Shepard."

Just thanks very much for using the word "trump" all in lower case for a meaning other than, well, you know. Such a relief that we can now reclaim the word and use it as before.