Anna Burns-Francis: Richard Branson is taking a big risk going to space

Richard Branson will take a rocket-powered space plane on a 2,400 mile-per-hour ride to the edge of space this weekend. That's if everything goes according to plan. And there's plenty that could go wrong.The rocket motor could fail to light up. The cabin could lose pressure and threaten the passengers' lives. And the intense physics involved when hurtling out of — and back into — the Earth's atmosphere could tear the vehicle apart.But Branson is ready to follow in the footsteps of the test pilots and Virgin Galactic employees who have already flown on VSS Unity, the vehicle Branson's company, Virgin Galactic, has spent nearly two decades working to develop. If all goes as planned, Branson will also be the first billionaire ever to travel to space aboard a vehicle he helped fund the development of, beating fellow space baron Jeff Bezos by just nine days.Any time humans are on an airborne vehicle, there's risk involved. Here's a breakdown of just how much danger Branson -— and the three people going with him — will be taking on.About the space plane: VSS UnityRichard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, after watching a space plane called SpaceShipOne rocket into space to win the Ansari X Prize. Branson bought the rights to that tech, and a team of engineers set to work developing a larger vehicle capable of carrying two pilots and up to six paying customers on a high-speed joy rides. The evolved designed is called SpaceShipTwo.SpaceShipTwo takes off from an airplane runway attached beneath the wing of a massive, custom-designed quad-jet double-fuselage mothership known as WhiteKnightTwo. Once the mothership reaches about 40,000 feet, the rocket-powered plane is dropped from in between WhiteKnightTwo's twin fuselages, and fires up its engine to swoop directly upward, accelerating up to more than three times the speed of sound, or 2,300 miles an hour.Once it reaches the very top of its flight path, it hangs, suspended in microgravity, as it flips onto its belly before gliding back down to a runway landing. From takeoff to landing, the whole trip takes roughly an hour.VSS Unity — the name of the SpaceShipTwo that Branson will be taking to space and the first to make the full trek — has completed three successful test flights so far. But the company's development program has also endured years of delays for a variety of reasons, including a fatal 2014 crash that killed a test pilot.A planned test flight in December was also halted when VSS Unity's onboard rocket motor computer lost connection. And Virgin Galactic encountered a potentially serious safety hazard during a test flight in 2019, New Yorker staff writer Nicholas Schmidle revealed in a new book, "Test Gods." A safety probe was ordered to investigate why a seal on its space plane's wing had come undone, risking loss of the vehicle and the lives of the three crew members on board. No one was harmed in the test flight, which was publicly deemed a success.But after VSS Unity's third test flight in May, the company received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin flying passengers. That doesn't mean, however, that the FAA — which is focused primarily on ensuring safety of people and property on the ground — is guaranteeing the spacecraft is safe. That decision is left up to Virgin Galactic, and the company made the surprise announcement on July 1 that Branson would be on the very next test flight — becoming the first non-crew member ever to make the trek — this Sunday.Markus Guerster, an aerospace industry professional who co-authored a 2018 paper on the risks of suborbital space tourism, said there is never a perfect time for a company to deem its spacecraft safe enough to fly members of the public."It's kind of a difficult decision to make — if you're ready, or if you're not ready, because there is some risk remaining. But if you don't try it, you're also not going to learn,"...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.