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One giant leap for tourism - 30th July 2021

Billionaire Jeff Bezos and entrepreneur extraordinaire Richard Branson are locked in battle, taking their entrepreneurial exploits out of this world. The business giants are in a race to get space tourism off the ground.

Branson was first to leave the ground in his Virgin Galactic Unity 22 spacecraft, living his childhood dream.

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's Blue Origin craft blasted off 9 days later, carrying his brother Mark and 82 year old Wally Funk, the world’s oldest astronaut. She finally entered orbit after battling gender discrimination throughout her career. With them was 18 year old Dutch student Oliver Daeman, the world’s youngest astronaut and first paying customer.

Both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have got passengers eagerly awaiting future flights. Tickets are said to be around $200-250,000, which makes it hardly surprising that most passengers are celebrities.

Both Branson and Bezos have been strong advocates for environmental concerns. Bezos has abandoned his Amazon CEO role to devote time to his space exploration endeavours and Earth Fund. Mirroring Bezos's move, Branson set aside $25 million for projects aiming to decrease greenhouse gases locked in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, we are left wondering: Do their space exploits conflict with their environmental endeavours?

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.