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British Billionaire Richard Branson Admits He Is ‘Jealous’ Of Falcon Heavy Launch And Wants To ‘Upstage’ Elon Musk

Y. K. SharmaComments Off on British Billionaire Richard Branson Admits He Is ‘Jealous’ Of Falcon Heavy Launch And Wants To ‘Upstage’ Elon Musk

British billionaire Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Galactic, is currently feeling jealous following the successful launch of SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and wants to “upstage” Elon Musk in near future.

“I was a little bit jealous,” Richard Branson told CNN’s Christine Romans on Tuesday.

Branson, however, described Falcon Heavy launch as “extraordinary.”

Last week, SpaceX captivated the world with successful launch of its Falcon Heavy. The rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and took with it a Tesla Roadster and its dummy driver Starman into space. With this successful launch, Falcon Heavy has become the most powerful rocket in use today. Falcon Heavy has a carrying capacity of 63 tons. Twenty-seven engines in the first stage of this rocket generate about 5 million pounds of thrust at the time of lift-off.  Falcon heavy is also much cheaper than the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket.

“They all just did fantastic,” Branson said at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Summit in Washington.

Branson also revealed that Virgin Galactic is “thinking about what we can do to upstage that one.”

Branson’s Virgin Galactic is currently in competition with SpaceX to launch tourists into space.

Branson told CNN that his firm would be “very disappointed” if it didn’t launch tourists into space in the next few months.

“I hope that Virgin Galactic will be the first of the three entrepreneurs fighting to put people into space to get there,” he said.

According to Branson, 800 engineers of Virgin Galactic are working very hard to ensure that the technology they develop to send tourists into space is safe.

“We will wait for their word before putting anybody up,” Branson said.

“Elon, Jeff and ourselves can do things for a fraction of the price that governments can do it — and I think we can make it a little more exciting as well,” Branson said.

Y. K. Sharma

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