The Virgin brand, including Branson's airline and former record label, has long been associated with exploits of derring-do by its flamboyant founder. Branson set a new record for the fastest boat crossing of the Atlantic in 1986, a year after his initial attempt ended with a Royal Air Force helicopter rescue when his vessel capsized. Lastly, regulatory delays outside of Astra's concern are another risk, as the company requires licenses from U.S. regulators like the Federal Aviation Administration for launches. It's honestly not a race," Branson told Reuters in an interview earlier this week. "If it's a race, it's a race to produce wonderful spaceships that can make many more people be able to access space. And I think that's both of our aims."

Branson, 70, insists there is plenty of demand from wealthy would-be citizen astronauts to go around, and that he had no intention of trying to upstage Bezos. Astra's board of directors includes Kemp, co-founder and chief technology officer Dr. Adam London, Advance executive Nomi Bergman and ACME venture capital partner Scott Stanford. In 1987 he made a record-breaking Atlantic crossing by hot-air balloon, though again he had to be rescued from the sea. He went on to break at least two other air-balloon speed records but failed to complete any of three bids to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. The company's risk factors, listed in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, also give investors a sense of what challenges Astra may see as it works toward its goals.

We found that most of the Astro Venture products are manufactured by Play Mind, PlayMind, and Playmind. The manufacturers provide Astro Venture with a steady supply of products, and they have a good cooperative relationship with each other.

It's a formidable goal. "You're talking about nearly a launch a day," said Ken Herbert, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity. Assuming the mission goes well, Virgin has said it plans two further test flights of the spaceplane before beginning commercial service next year.Astra laid out an aggressive timeline for scaling production and generating revenue, starting with its first commercial launch this summer.

All I need is a license from the FAA, we put a fence around a gravel pad, and we launch from there in five days with five people," Kemp said.

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PLAY AND EXPLORE: With 2 astronauts and a space vehicle, your budding space explorers will be able to let their imagination run wild while discovering all the strange things about the planets they land on. As for Sunday's flight, Branson said this week that he is excited, "and I really don't think there’s anything there to be scared about." If they succeed, their ventures will be taken more seriously," Caceres said. "There's plenty of multimillionaires in the world that would like to go up on an adventure, so long as they see it as relatively safe." Astro Venture is a brand in the play figure playsets industry, offering a wide range of play figure playsets and kids' play spaceships to its customers.

Is it possible theoretically? Yes. But, in basically four years, is one company going to be able to support that kind of schedule? It's ambitious – nobody's ever done it." Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, along with fellow billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX, are competing head-to-head in the emerging business of space tourism, though Musk has a big head start. The company plans to add spaceports all around the country, Kemp noted, and even in other countries that are U.S. allies. The three other mission specialists are Beth Moses, the company's chief astronaut instructor; Virgin Galactic's lead operations engineer Colin Bennett; and Sirisha Bandla, a research operations and government affairs vice president.Instead, Kemp says Astra's modular spacecraft will allow the company to drop off individual satellites in specific orbits on the same launch.