Space tourism comes of age after Branson soars

British billionaire Richard Branson has soared more than 80 kilometers above the New Mexico desert aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane and safely returned in the vehicle's first fully crewed test flight to space, a symbolic milestone for a venture he started 17 years ago.

Branson, one of six Virgin Galactic employees strapped in for the ride, touted the mission as a precursor to a new era of space tourism, with his company poised to begin commercial operations next year.

"We're here to make space more accessible to all. Welcome to the dawn of a new space age," said Branson.

The flight also gave the 70-year-old entrepreneur bragging rights in a highly publicized rivalry with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, the Amazon mogul who is planning to fly aboard his own rocket ship, the New Shepard, later this month.

"Congratulations," Bezos said on Instagram. "Can't wait to join the club!"

Branson, whose participation in the flight was announced just over a week ago, has insisted he and Bezos are friendly rivals. "We wish Jeff the absolute best and that he will get up and enjoy his flight," Branson said.

Bezos' Blue Origin, however, has disparaged Virgin Galactic as falling short of a true spaceflight experience, saying that, unlike Unity, the New Shepard tops the 100km Karman line set by an international aeronautics body as defining the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

"New Shepard was designed to fly above the Karman line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name," Blue Origin tweeted.

However, NASA and the US Air Force both define an astronaut as anyone who has flown higher than 80km.

Space industry executives, future customers and other well-wishers - including another billionaire space industry pioneer, Elon Musk of Tesla - were on hand to witness the launch.

The gleaming white VSS Unity space plane was carried aloft attached to the underside of the dual-fuselage jet VMS Eve from Spaceport America.

Reaching its high-altitude launch point at about 14,020 meters, the Unity was released from the mothership and fell away as the crew ignited its rocket, sending it streaking straight upward at supersonic speed to the blackness of space some 86km high.

At the apex of the climb with the rocket shut down, the crew experienced a few minutes of microgravity, before the space plane shifted into reentry mode, and began a gliding descent to a runway back at the spaceport. The entire flight lasted about an hour.

"I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I'm an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth," Branson said in a video from space.

The space plane's two pilots were Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci. The other crew were astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla of research operations.