Branson’s Flight Validates the Space SPACs Virgin Pioneered

For years, executives at Virgin Galactic have said that a key step along the way to offering passenger flights into space was to send the company’s founder, 70-year-old Richard Branson, on his own test flight. On Sunday, Branson flew to the edge of space in Virgin’s VSS Unity space plane, a trip that was conspicuously timed to take place less than two weeks before Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos is slated to make his own voyage.

Branson and Bezos see their flights as the beginning of a new stage in commercial space travel. But Virgin Galactic has been ...