Just a thought Sir Richard, what about making education and food more accessible to all?

Sorry but by NASA’s long standing definition he’s an astronaut. Bezos lost his little race to space. 100km is just an arbitrary measure like 50 miles. Suck it up.

With all due respect to this program, and the technical achievement that it represents, how does it make human existence on a climatically stressed planet better ? It serves no useful purpose other than pouring more waste from burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere, for the pleasure of a roller-coaster ride to the outer atmosphere and back for the very rich and the lottery winners of the charities wrapped around this venture. This represents nothing more than the irresponsible wastefulness of humans on this planet.

Karman Line, anyone?

I can't see paying big bucks for a brief flight like this one. You can't reach orbital speed that way,it is just up and down. Small,cargo carrying rockets can be launched into low earth orbit,but not the Unity 22.

Virgin crew did not make it to space, they are not astronauts - the craft was 6.5 miles short of the altitude which officially marks outer space, which is 60 miles, at apogee they reached 53.5 miles. Better luck next time!

Hilarious to hear Branson claiming his pulling forward from a previously scheduled later date to this weekend had nothing to do with Bezos scheduling his flight for this July.

Who really cares which of them got above 50 miles first anyway? What will be more interesting - to see how sustainable the revenue model will be for both companies to repeatedly fly these "space" flights. And who does it with the better safety and reliability record.

Meanwhile Musk chuckles as he cranks up the more sustainable commercial business model.

Hit most definitely hit space - by the standards of NASA, the FAA, and the US Military... enough of the discrediting here. The mission could not have been smoother - congrats to the flight crew and ground crews on all of the incredible work over the past years. He won the billionaire's race to space.

Wow, a landmark and a letdown at the same time. They took off and landed within something like twenty minutes, a 50 mile up and 50 mile down trip. And their video glitched the whole way, both from the ground and the air. Some comm techs are looking for jobs right about now. I'd love to have gone up, though. Does anyone here NOT want to go into space?

Meanwhile, SpaceX is slowly, quietly, building a global communication network, SpaceLink. The profits will all be re-invested in a moon base and those profits in a mars base.
A century from now no-one will know who Bezos or Branson were. Everyone will know about Musk for a long, long time.