Virgin Galactic made headlines when it announced that founder Sir Richard Branson, the British billionaire, would fly to space on July 11, 2021—nine days ahead of Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos. But does 80km truly count as space?
On Sunday, July 11, 2021, Virgin Galactic launched its first crewed suborbital mission aboard VSS Unity. A carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, carried the spaceplane to high altitude before release, allowing it to rocket upward. The goal: reach 80km altitude. The crew—two pilots and four mission specialists, including Branson—experienced about four minutes of weightlessness before gliding back to Earth.
Does 80km qualify as space? NASA, the FAA, and U.S. military standards say yes, defining outer space as beginning above this boundary. Yet, the internationally recognized Kármán line sits at 100km.
Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic's rival in suborbital tourism, highlighted the gap. Its New Shepard rocket surpasses 100km. Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told The Times: "We wish them a good, safe flight, but they're not flying over the Kármán line, and it's a very different experience."
Branson countered in a July 7 NPR interview, citing NASA and FAA recognition of 80km. He added, "the real difference in experience will be almost non-existent," as VSS Unity offers comparable weightlessness to New Shepard.
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard-Smithsonian satellite expert, supports 80km in his 2018 paper. Mid-20th-century physicist Theodore von Kármán calculated where orbital dynamics overtake aerodynamics—now refined to 70-90km. Thus, 80km strikes a balanced, authoritative threshold.
