the new space race

Branson kicks off billionaire space race with successful flight

British billionaire Richard Branson on Sunday became the first so-called "space baron" to successfully spend some time, however brief, away from Earth.

The Virgin Group founder, along with three others, took off from New Mexico on board the spacecraft Unity, which was initially attached to the Virgin Galactic aircraft VMS Eve. After reaching 50,000 feet, Eve launched Unity to the edge of space, allowing Branson and his fellow travelers a moment to experience weightlessness and check out the curvature of their home planet before they descended to Earth and landed safely. On the way back, Branson said it was the "experience of a lifetime."

Scientifically speaking, Branson's journey wasn't groundbreaking — some critics argued the trip was really an advance in long-distance "plane flight" rather than a space venture, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he doesn't consider the expedition to fall under the category of space travel. Really, though, Branson's goal was to usher in an era of commercial space tourism, likely regardless of whether it contributes to a deeper scientific purpose.