Richard Branson’s attempt to enter the space race, has not gone as planned, to put it mildly.
Virgin Orbit launched nine small satellites atop a rocket dropped from a 747 jumbo jet south of Ireland on Monday,
The 747 “Cosmic Girl” jet took off from Cornwall Airport Newquay in what had been billed as the first orbital launch from the UK, but the booster suffered a failure during the climb to space and the payloads were lost, the company said.
Rocket scientists
So what actually happened?
Who do you think we are rocket scientists?
Luckily, Richard himself tweeted the reasons why the mission failed.
Virgin Orbit boss Dan Hart said: “The first-time nature of this mission added layers of complexity that our team professionally managed through; however, in the end a technical failure appears to have prevented us from delivering the final orbit.”
Net worth
It is not just the rocket that took a nosedive.
He has also seen a huge amount knocked off his net worth due to the failure.
According to The Evening Standard $106 million (£87 million) was wiped from his wealth after shares in his rocket venture tumbled. Virgin Orbit shares fell 21% in the opening minutes of trading on Wall Street.
He controls a 75% stake in the company.
Reactions
There was a lot of hard work by many people on the project.
But did many people feel sorry for him?
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This is a bit random…
Spare a thought for him though, as he hates the word billionaire.
Jeremy Corbyn’s tweet from 2017 might sway your sympathy levels?
Related: Reactions as ‘save the planet Sunak’ gets very short private jet flight
