Virgin Galactic's former CEO George Whitesides to fly to space on next test flight: Report

Former chief executive of Virgin Galactic Holdings, George Whitesides will fly to space on the aerospace company’s next test spaceflight. If successful, Whitesides will join a group of billionaires who've recently ventured into outer space including the founder of the spaceflight company Richard Branson and Amazon Inc’s founder Jeff Bezos. Earlier this month, it was reported that SpaceX Ceo Elon Musk had booked a ride to the suborbital space with Virgin Galactic. 

CNBC, on Friday reported, the announcement about Whitesides’ flight was made by Branson himself during a party in New Mexico on July 11. The report was based on a statement by Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator of NASA who was present at the aforementioned party. According to Garver, Bramson at the party announced “George will be leading our next flight."

Branson's spaceflight

On July 11 at 20:00hrs, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic rocket plane took for a 1.5-hour mission in a bid to see the space at an altitude where the Earth's horizon curves are vivid despite the distance. The entrepreneur had said that he wanted to evaluate the experience before boarding paying customers next year. The billionaire traveled aboard the company's New Shepard rocket. Also, Branson's team included two Indians, namely, Shirisha Bandla who became the second India-born astronaut after Kalpana Chawla to have reached space; and a Kerala-based travel documentary maker Santosh George was also aboard where he captured the unprecedented moment.

While the successful mission implied that Branson had defeated Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the British billionaire hailed the “experience of a lifetime” along with acknowledgment of the “hard, hard work” that went into the flight. Branson is now the first owner-astronaut to take part in the mission until Bezos kickstarts a similar mission through his Blue Origin in a few days. Branson said, “I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but nothing could have prepared me for the view of Earth from space. We are at the vanguard of a new space age. As Virgin’s founder, I was honored to test the incredible customer experience as part of this remarkable crew of mission specialists and now astronauts.”

Image: National Space Society