[imagesource: Getty Images]

On July 20, Jeff Bezos will head to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

The rocket will launch in West Texas, on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969.

Joining Bezos will be his brother, Mark, and the winner of an online auction.

How much would you pay to leave this world behind, albeit briefly? According to the Blue Origin website, the winning bid for that extra seat is currently at $4 million.

Registration to bid closes at 11PM tonight, South African time, and the live auction will take place on Saturday (June 12) at 7PM our time.

Elon Musk and Bezos have been duelling over winning NASA’s contract to take people to the moon again, which Musk won, but at least Bezos will claim the billionaire space race, right?

Enter fellow multimillionaire Richard Branson, who is rumoured to be mounting a last-gasp attempt to pip his suborbital space tourism rival.

Here’s Parabolic Arc:

Virgin Galactic is working on a plan to send Branson on a suborbital flight aboard the VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket plane over the July 4 holiday weekend, according to a source who requested anonymity. The flight is contingent upon obtaining an operator’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)…

Image: Virgin Galactic

Before it can fly Branson, Virgin Galactic must obtain a commercial reusable spacecraft operator’s license from the FAA. The license would allow Virgin Galactic to fly its billionaire founder as the company’s first spaceflight participant. Under its current launch license, Virgin Galactic is limited to flying employees as test subjects on a non-commercial basis.

Branson’s space flight was originally planned for later in the year, but it appears things have been brought forward as a result of Bezos’ timeline.

When asked to comment on the rumoured July 4 flight, reports Ars Technica, Virgin Galactic’s communications team didn’t offer an outright denial:

 “We are in the process of analyzing the data from our successful May 22nd flight,” the company’s statement said. “As previously announced, we expect to complete the final test flights this summer through to early fall. At this time, we have not determined the date of our next flight.”

If the May 22 flight went well, which seems to have been the case, the VSS Unity could be ready to launch again by the date in question.

Even if Branson did get out ahead of Bezos, there is sure to be some ego-fuelled debate around what constitutes reaching space:

The FAA recognizes 50 miles (80.4 km) as the boundary of space. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale – the keeper of aviation and space records – considers the boundary of space to be located at 100 km (62.1 miles), which is known as the Karman line.

VSS Unity has made three flights above 50 km, but it reportedly cannot reach the Karman line.

New Shepard, on which Bezos will travel, has exceeded the 100-kilometre mark on 12 of its 15 flights.

Maybe a measuring contest would save them both a great deal of time and money.

[sources:parabolicarc&arstechnica]