Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, is readying to fly as part of the Unity 22 mission this Sunday. Depending on weather and technical checks, Branson could make it to space ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin flight is scheduled for nine days later, and almost definitely ahead of Elon Musk, who has yet to announce plans to board a flight from his company SpaceX. (Reuters, The Logic)

Talking point: The trip by the British billionaire marks a return to the 70 year old’s daredevil exploits. It will be a roughly 90-minute flight test of the space tourism venture’s customer service experience. The company expects to start commercial services in 2022 and already has more than 600 reservations at about US$250,000 each. Bezos dismissed Branson as a Blue Origin competitor, calling the Virgin Galactic spaceship a “high-altitude airplane” with “airplane-sized windows” that doesn’t fly above the Kármán line where “space begins.” That’s maybe a relief for the anonymous winner of an auction who paid US$28 million to secure a seat alongside Bezos and others on July 20.