Race for space - 30th July 2021

Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson went to space. They are starting space tourism.

Branson went into space first. His spaceship's name is Virgin Galactic Unity 22.

This was his childhood dream, and he wants children to dream big too.

Richard Branson: To all you kids down there, I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now, I'm an adult in a spaceship, with lots of other wonderful adults looking down to our beautiful, beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do.

Bezos went into space 9 days after Branson. His spaceship's name is Blue Origin. There were four people on this spaceship. There was Bezos and his brother Mark. There was an 82 year old woman astronaut, Wally Funk. There was an 18 year old student, Oliver Daeman. Oliver paid for his space trip.

Branson and Bezos want to help the environment. Bezos left his CEO job at Amazon. He started his space and environment projects. Branson is interested in clean air. He's giving $25 million to projects. But, is space travel good for the environment or the air?

Jeff Bezos: We're going to build a road to space, so that our kids and their kids can build the future. And we need to do that. We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth.