Space tourism takes off - 30th July 2021

The world's wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, and head of Virgin, Richard Branson, have made it into space. They're eager to launch space tourism.

The first one up was Branson, who travelled in his Virgin Galactic Unity 22 spaceship. The flight made his childhood dream come true.

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.

9 days later, Bezos launched into space in his Blue Origin spaceship. Besides Jeff and his brother Mark, two others were onboard: the world's oldest astronaut – Wally Funk, aged 82 – who had to fight sexism throughout her career, and the world's first paying passenger, Oliver Daemen. Oliver, 18, is also the youngest person into space.

The two companies have queues of customers. Tickets cost $200-250,000 and loads of celebrities have bought for future trips.

The two men have started focusing on environmental issues. Bezos gave up his CEO role at Amazon so he could focus on his Earth Fund and space project. Branson pledged $25 million to any project focusing on ridding Earth's atmosphere of greenhouse gases. However, does space tourism match their passions for the environment?

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.