Sir Richard Branson and the crew of Virgin Galactic’s “Unity 22” mission just completed a successful trip to the edge of space topping out at an altitude of 282,000 feet.

That’s enough to make each of the members of the crew an astronaut and the era of citizens being able to experience space without having to go through the many years of training to become a professional astronaut is now upon us.

I don’t care who you are…that’s a monumental achievement right there!

Certainly there has been plenty of criticism that this was really a billionaire’s measuring contest and Sir Richard has gotten there first before his competitors at SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origins (Jeff Bezos).

But honestly, if Sir Richard wants to pour massive amounts of money and years of his life into realising the dream of experiencing space and paving the way for many more people to join the astronaut club in the future…I say bloody good job! 🙂

If you doubt the man’s sincerity…just watch the video of the letter he wrote to his late mum that was shown prior to VSS Unity being dropped from the mother ship that was named for her…the VMS Eve.

It’s certainly not been an easy journey that started in the 1990s with Scaled Composites building VSS Unity’s predecessor SpaceShipOne that would go on to win the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for being the first private company to complete two manned trips into space within a two week period.

And certainly the tragedy in 2014 where the first SpaceShipTwo-class ship VSS Enterprise suffered an in-flight breakup due to premature deployment of the feather mechanism used for re-entry during the ascent phase which resulted in the loss of one of the two pilots that were onboard.

Space is hard and it’s not for the faint-hearted.

But Virgin Galactic and companies like them that are starting to open up space to a greater number of people is a good thing…our species has a destiny amongst the stars and it will be the dreamers who then work to bring that dream to reality who will make going into space as routine as stepping on an airliner and taking a couple hour flight.

Well done to the crew of VSS Unity on a mission well-executed!

It truly is a great time to be a nerd! 🙂