Depending on how you look at things, Richard Branson did not accomplish terribly much this morning. Yes, the billionaire co-founder of Virgin Galactic woke up intending to go to space today, and yes, he went. Along with two pilots and three other passengers, Branson lifted off aboard his VSS Unity spacecraft shortly before 9:00 a.m. MT, soared 86 km (53.5 miles) up, arced into space for four minutes of weightlessness and then glided gently back to Earth, landing on a runway in the New Mexico Desert.
