Billionaire Sir Richard Branson successfully reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, the vehicle his company has been developing since 2004. He returned safely to Earth just over an hour after leaving the ground and said “I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space. The whole thing was just magical.”
The trip makes him the first of the new space tourism pioneers to try out their own vehicles, beating Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. Some 600 individuals have already paid deposits for tickets that will cost them up to $250,000 (£180,000). The Russians are also reprising their commercial flights to the ISS and there are even those who want to launch private space stations for people to visit.
For an extra frisson Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will have a glass-domed observation deck available for the passengers it’s shuttling to the International Space Station for an eight-day stay at $55 million a piece. Passes belief.
Branson, 18 July 1950 7am Blackheath, England, is an entrepreneur and innovator, owner of a wide range of companies from records to railways, airlines to telecoms with some resounding failures as well as successes.
He has a 12th house Cancer Sun conjunct the Fixed star Procyon – he shares his birthday serendipitously with astronaut John Glenn. Procyon usually suggests wealth and good fortune, though it can also bring great lows as well as highs. Branson has a determined Pluto on his Ascendant, a publicity attracting Mars Neptune in his 3rd; and adventurous and financially lucky Jupiter in his 8th trine Uranus; and a serious Saturn in his financial 2nd. It’s not entirely clear from his chart why he should have been able to carve such a unique and globally successful career. Though he does have several notable Harmonics – especially global fame 22H; and the innovative 13H.
He famously has a sticky relationship with Jeff Bezos whose nose will now be out of joint since he was beaten to the post with the first tourist flight. See previous post Jeff Bezos June 12 2021.
Bezos is a Sun Mars in Capricorn which opposes and clashes with Branson’s Sun; and both their Saturns are in hard aspect to the other’s Pluto which makes this a battle between heavyweights.
Their relationship chart has a seriously aggravated composite Saturn Mars square Pluto, trine Uranus which will evoke hostility and frustration if the other wins.
Branson is in a challenging year with tr Pluto opposing his Sun until this December and earlier this year his Solar Arc Pluto was square his Sun – so he would feel the pressures keenly. He’s aiming for an upbeat Jupiter Return early in 2022 and more success on the business money front through 2022. Tr Pluto is trine his Jupiter/Pluto this year and next plus plus so he’s on a roll. Though it won’t all be plain sailing ahead and there’s a real risk of him allowing his confidence to overstep the bounds of common sense in one area of his plans come 2023.
Just this. “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
We have a long way to go.
Online news only complains about “rich billionaires who are floating in space” when they should be saving the earth. Now, who has the worst shortsightedness on this subject? Billionaires or ten billion hungry, self-centered souls?
In a hundred years, we’ll look back on this as a pivital moment as humanity cuts the apron strings.