A giant leap for space tourism

The race for space shot to a new level with the world's wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, and Virgin empire founder Richard Branson both blasting up into the Earth's atmosphere in a giant leap for space tourism.

The first to blast off was Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic Unity 22 space shuttle - the fulfilment of 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 and his Blue Origin craft reached for the skies just 9 days later.

Aboard with Bezos and his brother Mark were the world's oldest and youngest astronauts. 82 year old Wally Funk had her space career thwarted by sexism. Sitting alongside her, 18 year old Dutch student Oliver Daeman was also Blue Origin's first paying passenger.

Both companies already have further paying customers lined up and, with tickets rumoured to be between $200-250,000, it comes as no surprise that those taking a closer look at the stars are often shining celebrities themselves.

Yet since Branson and Bezos are both loud exponents on environmental issues - Bezos having resigned as CEO of Amazon to pursue his space project and his Earth Fund and Branson offering $25 million for any project that can scrub the Earth's atmosphere clean of greenhouse gases - the question remains: Is space tourism really the way forward?

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.

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