The Wall Street Journal reports that Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has bought a $250K ticket on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) flights.
Bronson, who on Sunday made a trip to the edge of space, confirmed Musk’s seat reservation for a future Virgin voyage, saying he might reciprocate by reserving a ticket on a SpaceX flight in the future.
“Elon’s a friend and maybe I’ll travel on one of his ships one day,” Branson said.
Virgin Galactic says it has already sold more than 600 tickets to customers willing to put down an average of $130K each for a chance to fly to space, which includes 4 minutes of zero gravity. The company aims to run two more test flights this year and start carrying paying passengers in 2022. The ultimate goal is 400 flights every year from all the spaceports.
In what has been dubbed the billionaires’ space race, Bronson is now the first billionaire to take part in a space mission, beating Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos who plans to ride up into space on July 20 aboard the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by his space company, Blue Origin.
SPCE Price Action
Virgin Galactic shares plunged more than 17% to close at $40.69 yesterday. The dump came after the company announced plans to sell up to $500 million worth of common stock.
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