The race to break “firsts” records drove two private enterprises to send a spacecraft ten days within each other in July of 2021 together with their respective founders. Richard Branson, aka Astronaut 001, the founder of Virgin Galactic was aboard the VSS Unity, and was first to launch on July 11. On July 20, Jeff Bezos took flight on New Shepard, the spacecraft of Blue Origin, an enterprise he founded in 2000. Who won and actually holds the record can be debated, as only Bezos crossed the Fédération aéronautique International (FAI)-defined Kármán Line, or the proposed atmospheric line that marks the beginning of outer space.
