But the wonder he experienced as a 19-year-old watching Neil Armstrong make that “giant leap for mankind” will forever be tarnished by the death of a test pilot in the explosion that destroyed Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo on Friday.
Hours later, Sir Richard’s critics were not holding back. He had “too much hubris” and “too little knowledge” to be involved in the space business, wrote Jeffrey Kluger, a Time magazine journalist and author of the book Apollo 13, which was later made into a film.
Branson’s biographer Tom Bower told Radio 4 on Sunday: “The problem is that Branson placed so much of his commercial future on this rocket, because it was such a brilliant PR stunt … But it was always dangerous and it was always going to end in tragedy.”
It might be unfair on Sir Richard to expect him to have a detailed knowledge of aerospace engineering. However, he has made repeated predictions that paying passengers would soon be travelling into space.