Richard Branson, the press, and the space in between

It’s space, Richard—at least as NASA knows it. Yesterday, the British billionaire Richard Branson, two pilots, and three other people rode a rocket plane operated by Virgin Galactic, an arm of Branson’s business empire, fifty three and a half miles into the air—a test run for the sort of private space flight that may soon be available to normal people (or, at least, normal people with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare). The flight generated a lot of hype, though there was also some debate, including in the media coverage, as to whether Branson was really going to space at all: while a variety of US agencies define space as beginning fifty miles above the earth’s surface, other bodies—including the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which is the global authority on such matters—say the marker is twelve miles higher than that, and thus eight and a half miles higher than Branson traveled. Some pundits were unimpressed. “I’m sorry, but if you’re not orbiting the earth you’re not a Space Billionaire,” Matthew Yglesias tweeted, contrarily. “We’ve all been in airplanes.” Even the New York Times, as Yglesias noted, caveated the weightlessness that Branson and his fellow riders experienced as “apparent.” “Apparent weightlessness” might also be a good way to characterize much of the TV coverage of the flight. Reporters threw around adjectives like “exciting” and “spectacular,” and revelled in Branson’s showmanship (Khalid debuted a song at the event; Stephen Colbert... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-07-12 12:05:06 UTC ]

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