people into space, to experience what astronauts call the over-effect, but that feeling of going up into space, seeing the curvature of the earth, seeing that there are no boundaries between countries, the thinness of the ozone layer and then coming back and trying to make the world a better place. that's what today is all about, jake. >> amazing. christian fisher, thank you. fareed zakaria continues our live coverage right now. this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live in new york. in this hour, the billionaire richard branson is set to go to space. in just 30 minutes he takes off near truth and consequences, new mexico in a spaceship called

u.s.s. unity. the spaceship will go up not in the way you're used to seeing them go up, but in the mother eve. the whole thing will last just one hour and five minutes, according to virgin galactic. we'll bring did to you live when it happens, and i will be joined by the one and only neil ryson, about whether they'll go into space. we have cnn reporters on the ground in new mexico where the launch is happening, rachel crane and kristen fisher. rachel, what are you hearing about -- what is going to

happen? what are we going to see? >> reporter: well, fareed, we just had a really exciting moment happen just a few short moments ago. we saw richard branson and his specialists come out of the hangar, get in their vehicles and head out to the runway where vss unity, their spaceship, their mother eve are parked and ready to take off in about 30 minutes. this lift-off, the mother ship eve will take vss unity to about 40,000 feet. that's when the spaceship will release and the rocket engine will ignite, shooting these soon-to-be astronauts into the edge of space where they will experience a few precious minutes of weightlessness before gliding back here to earth and space port america will they will be greeted with a spectacle in branson fashion. there is music that will greet them, tons of vips have flocked

here to america to watch what has been nearly two decades in the making, fareed. >> it's so telling of the age. there was a time when it was governments who were battling to be in space, the united states and the soviet union, and now, of course, it's billionaires. i wanted to ask kristen fisher about this billionaire race. branson has essentially snuck this trip in before his fellow billionaire jeff bezos was able to lift off. why do you think that is, kristen? someone said to me branson is raising money, he needs cash, unlike jeff bezos who has hundreds of billions of dollars. so it was important for richard branson to emphasize the kind of pr dynamic here. >> reporter: well, look, virgin galactic is a business. it's a publicly traded company and they have been selling seats

to spaceship2 for several, several years now, and they have not been able to deliver on these tickets to their paying customers. and so today is about richard branson getting on board spaceship 2 and showing that, hey, i believe this is going to be a safe flight and the faa just granted virgin galactic its license, approved it for commercial operations. they are planning two more test flights and then they are set to begin flying these paying customers in 2022. already, as i mentioned, they have between 600 and 700 people who have already put down deposits for these seats which cost somewhere between 200 and $250,000. after today's flights, they could jump up to half a million. but the goal, according to virgin galactic, is to bring it down to $40,000, about the price of a car, but still very

affordable compared to what these seats have been going for. in terms of these billionaire space barons, yes, people think it's no coincidence that richard branson bumped up his launch after jeff bezos announced he would be going on july 20th. he insists this is not a competition, that they had a successful test flight back in may and this was the logical next step. but you can't miss the fact that just two days ago, blue origin, virgin galactic's competitor, put out the differences between these two. the fact that blue origin goes higher into space, the fact they have bigger windows on their spacecraft, the fact they have an escape system, and spaceship 2 does not have one. there was that accident back in 2014 in which one of virgin galactic's test pilots lost his life.

significant changes have been made to spaceship 2 since then, and the chance for a similar accident like that happening today very, very slim. but, you know, it really is quite incredible that virgin galactic as a company survived that, and bwe are now here toda. >> kristin, thank you. now to the indomitable host of "space talk," author, and you are the first one to join me in 5,000 days. >> i'm very happy to share your air. >> i must ask, are you fully vaccinated? >> yes. >> is richard branson really going into space? the bezos outfit has pointed out that 96% of humanity does not believe he is going to space. explain what that means. >> i don't know what the rest of

humanity is thinking, but i know as an astrophysicist what this is. there is an operational definition of space that is used and invoked internationally. that definition is if you go up 100 kilometers, that counts as space. that's about 62 miles. where you get that number, it's sen sensibly derived. we sit here and we see a blue sky. why does it have any color at all? it's because sunlight, when it hits particles in the air, selectively scatters blue light from the sunlight. that happens at an extreme level at sunset. so much blue is taken from the sun that the sun looks red oram b -- or amber. that's not the color of the sun. if you go higher in the atmosphere where there is not so much of those particles above

you, the sky disappears, in a sense. it's no longer blue, it's no color at all. it becomes black even in broad daylight. they figure that's the point you enter space. that's about 100 kilometers. you'll get most of that -- he's going 50 miles up -- you'll get most of that at that distance but it's below the international level. >> but the u.s., the reason i say -- the u.s. military has used the definition of space which is roughly where branson is going. navy pilots, ic think, get a medal for going 50 miles above. >> okay. because you can just barely get a regular airplane that high, spy planes and things. but consider, again, i'm coming at this as an astrophysicist. if our atmosphere were half as dense as it is, then that magic height would only be half as high. if we had one-tenth of

atmosphere pressure, it would be a tenth as high. are we walking around on a planet with no atmosphere? that's an awkward situation to start defining space to be. >> to you, is this space travel? >> no. i'm sorry. it's sub oruborbital and nasa d that six years ago with case shepard. >> nor bezos nor branson will be placed into orbit? >> correct. did you go high enough and did you get into orbit? i kind of like that one. then the other one is, did you actually go somewhere? are you going to the moon or mars or beyond?

so spacex's concept is, we want to send people places as an effort to push this boundary, push this space exploration frontier. that said, i'm delighted this could be a new frontier for the world. it should have been happening decades ago, decades ago. it should have been 60 years before private enterprise did what nasa did back in 1961. more power to all of them. >> but is there a gain in knowledge that comes from to going boldly where hundreds of gone before? >> can i invoke this snhere? i just found this laying around on the desk. >> we're "gps." >> this is a typical schoolroom globe. by the way, how high up does the space station orbit?

authentically a space-faring vessel. that would be one centimeter above the surface if earth were that size. if you poll people, where do you think the space station is, they'll stick it out here somewhere. it's 1 centimeter. where is this magic boundary you start seeing? that would be 2 millimeters above the surface. >> wow. >> now you're going to be sort of less than that. so maybe the thickness of two dimz above the surface. and so -- you want to call it space? regular people haven't done that before, so there is a novelty to it. i have this apple which is slightly smaller than the size of the moon. you might ask where is the moon on this scale?

the moon is 10 miles away in the next room. that's why it takes eight minutes to get to orbit and three days to get to the moon. that's actual space travel for context. so i see it not as, oh, we're going into space. no, you're getting a nice view of the earth. i don't even know if you'll see the curvature. i did some calculations and i'm thinking they're not. if you're 2 millimeters above the surface of this globe, you're not getting the perspective of everybody else. but national boundaries disappear. it's an overview effect that you will get a little bit of even at 50 miles up. more power to them. that's fine. >> kristin fisher, can i come back to you for a second? >> can i eat this apple, by the way? >> neil wants to eat his apple. i think he can. kristin, your parents are both astronauts, and i wonder whether you have some perspective about what did they see when they went up? did they talk about the

curvature of the earth? what are your memories of the conversations with them? >> reporter: well, it's kind of the same thing that richard branson has been talking so much about, home that he's going to get to see and hoping that he can share with all of his future customers, and that is really just seeing earth from afar, seeing it all in one glance. my mom and dad often talked about how you would never see any boundaries between countries, you could see how thin the atmosphere was, how fragile it was. any time you go into space, people come back and say, oh, my gosh, it was truly a transformative experience. some even call it a religious experience. it really does seem to change a person, and richard branson, he has been talking about wanting to go to space since the late '80s at the latest. he founded this company back in 2004 and has been trying to make this happen ever since.

there have been setbacks. there have been financial issues, there have been tragedies. you know, all of these things are inherent to space flight. you've heard the phrase the mantra space is hard, because it really, really is. the fact that richard branson and the entire virgin galactic team is here today, and he truly is on the verge of having that transformative moment and then be able to bring it back and give other humans this kind of experience, it's really a special day. and a special day for the state of new mexico, too, because if you look at where we are, this is called spaceport america. it is a commercial space port, intended to be a hub for sub orbital space tourism. this has been operational for about ten years, all waiting for the first paying customers to take flight, which we now believe will be in early 2022 sometime if everything goes okay. but i think the number one thing my parents and every astronaut

i've spoken to has said is just seeing that pale blue dot really just strikes a chord in a way that you can't quite process until you see it. a lot of people get very emotional, and i would imagine that there might even be some tears up on board that spaceship when richard branson and the rest of the unity 22 crew finally get to see those visions of earth from space. >> kristin fisher, thank you so much. ri ri rachel, any updates? tell us what you're seeing on the ground. >> reporter: fareed, we are really now in the final countdown here. this takeoff is scheduled for 10:30 eastern, 8:30 local. of course, as we saw this morning with the weather delay, that's subject to change a little bit, and this is not an instantaneous launch window which we see with the spacex launches we've recently seen

from the kennedy space center. fareed, i want to point out that it is really, really important for viewers, people to understand that this is still a test flight. virgin galactic has not started their commercial operations. they don't intend to until the start of 2022. they plan to have two additional test flights following this one today. richard branson is flying as a mission specialist on board this flight this afternoon. there will be three other mission specialists with him. one of them will be conducting research, actually, on board the spaceship, testing a gene expression in plants during this sub suborbital trip. obviously there is a huge spectacle on the ground. there is music in the background, tons of people milling about. it is very important to remember this is still a test flight, and as a result, the company has taken extra precautions to ensure the safety of the space flight participants. they're all wearing parachutes.

there is also supplemental oxygen on board. the pilots during the flights, they wear oxygen masks. but the passengers, they don't have to, although they do have supplemental oxygen by their side if need be. also i had the opportunity to speak to mike moses a few days ago who is their head of safety, and he told me also in case of cabin depressurization, if there is a leak on board, they have four times the oxygen needed to keep the spaceship pressurized and make sure that this crew and the space flight participants stay safe. again, important to remember that despite the spectacle around us, it is still a test flight. the company is still in the test phases gathering data. and richard branson, his objective here is to test the astronaut experience. he's really been taking notes as he's gone through his training the last through days at spaceport america what he wants this to be like for those 600 passengers who have paid around

$200,000 a seat. they want to make sure they get the best experience possible. also not for nothing, which there is a competitor out there, blue origin, that will also be selling seats to space enthusiasts around the world. branson saying he does not see this as a race, that it came up that they were flying participants, not just crew, and that's how he was able to join the flight as well. they had a flawless test just a few weeks ago. those three things coupled together allowed the engineers to think they could put their boss, sir richard branson, on this flight. i also want to point out mike moses, the gentleman i spoke to about safety i was just speaking of, his wife beth moses is also on this flight. she is one of the mission specialists. so talk about the pressure being on. not only is the world watching,

but the man who is the president of safety for this company has both his boss and his wife on board, so it certainly shows a lot of confidence in the system that virgin galactic has created. fareed? >> rachel, totally fascinating. thank you so much. we're going to take a quick break while we're waiting for the astronauts to go to the lunch v launch vehicles. we'll be back in a moment.

and we are back awaiting the liftoff of mother ship eve which will take richard branson to space. eve will carry unity, a space plane which will take branson into space. we're back with neil degrasse tyson in new york, richel crane and kristin fisher. neil, what is this plane compared to the kind of rockets we think of when we think of space travel, meaning going to the moon or something? >> let's go back to alex shepard in 1961. he was on a mercury redstone sort of launch system, and it was a capsule. and this is in preparation for actually achieving orbit in subsequent missions. in that situation, you launch with the rotation of the earth,

because ultimately you want to go into orbit, and if you launch with the rotation, you get that extra speed that the rotation of the earth endows you on launch. so launching beast -- east is always better. when you have a space plane, you get to reach those same altitudes but then sort of fall back to earth and then you experience that weightlessness. it's only while you're falling. when the rockets are firing, you feel those g-forces. when the rockets turn off and then you just sort of coast, that's when you're weightless. but the moment it hits the atmosphere again, it's sufficient density, and the control surfaces of the wings that now matter, that's a good th thing, because now it can find its way back to new mexico and land on a runway, and we don't have to fish them out of the ocean like we had to fish alex

shepard. that's a fundamental difference. that's why it looks like an airplane but a really cool futuristic airplane, for that reason. >> when you describe the difference between this kind of suborbital travel and space travel where you achieve orbit, does it tell us it's going to be a really long while before we can have tourists doing orbital space travel? >> that's a subjective comment and question. what it takes to go above this 5 50, 60-mile boundary are two completely different things. when you achieve orbit, you see rockets launch, all of those engines are to go up. most of that energy is to go sideways. we're entering the role program of the shuttle. the shuttle didn't keep going straight up, it went down range. why? because you're giving it enough

speed that when you shut off the engines, it just falls back to earth. but it's going so fast sideways -- >> like 20,000 miles an hour. >> 18,000 miles an hour sideways, but it's going so fast that as it falls to earth, earth's curvature means it's not getting closer to earth. this is the remarkable thing about an orbit. isaac newton first wrote this down back in 1687. so restaurants are in freefall towards earth but going so fast sideways they'll never collide with earth. that's called an orbit. astronauts in orbit are not sustained in orbit from any kind of rocket propulsion or anything. that's just the speed you need in order to maintain that. so people think if you're in space, you are weightless. no, if you're falling, no matter where in the universe you are weightless. you could cut the cables on an elevator -- no, you wouldn't do that. but if that happened -- >> you would feel weightless for

a while. >> for a while, until you're a pile of goo at the boom. that's why at this mission, only until the rockets have stopped firing and it then begins its descent back to earth, like i said, before it becomes an airplane again, that's when you're weightless. it's for a brief period of time. >> is that a tricky moment, the point at which the plane is falling, not actually using its own power and then have to regain control to land on a runway? >> if the plane is well designed, then what will happen is when it starts feeling the air, then the pilot can control and stabilize what the plane is doing. usually computers help that. that's why you have all these control surfaces to enable this. while it's falling, it sounds dangerous, but, yeah, in that moment the plane can't do much of anything, because it can't be a plane and it ran out of its rockets. >> the plane is effectively an object in space. >> okay. yeah, it's a brick. until it can be an airplane

again, it's just a brick. >> while i have you and before we have to get going, speaking of objects in space, what did you make of the u.s. government report of all these pilots seeing what were really ufos? they called them some fancy government term. >> i don't know why the government calls them ufps. they're ufos. don't pretend they are what they aren't. i'm as excited about the next person about these unexplained detections from -- many of them were navy pilots. i don't know what they are. if i were a betting person, i would say maybe it's a glitch in the software or the hardware. any time you have some new, modern, fancy anything, there are glitches in it. you know this from when you have to update your software, okay? and anyone who declares this has no errors means it doesn't have any errors, they haven't found

them yet. i'm just saying that -- and it could be aliens. but that is insufficient evidence to convince me. >> and i've been told that a lot of times, the way you take these images, people used to think that the moon photographs were fake because they would say you can't see any stars. but that was apparently all about the exposure. if you have an exposure where you're looking at near objects, the faraway objects like stars disappear. >> it's bright objects. so if it's bright and you're properly exposed for the surface of the moon, who said that had no clue about photography and how photography works. that's the kind of world we live in. >> all right. i want to make sure we're not missing anything. rachel, where do we stand? >> reporter: well, fareed, i want to point out that michael

k colglazier came outside to tell everyone this historic space flight is soon to take off in 10 or 15 minutes. they're set to start their livestream of the event. of course there is an event of the event in typical branson style. there will also be a musical performance. certainly, i have to tell you the energy surrounding me, it just went up about seven notches, everybody knowing this space flight is about to take off. i want to remind the viewers what they're going to see in a couple minutes. vss unity is this spaceship that richard branson and the pilots are currently in. it's made into the mother ship eve. it will take off from the runway which is about 20 feet here from spaceport america, and it will climb about 20 feet. that's when eve will reach unity, and it will be in freefall before that rocket engine uunites, catapulting the

passengers up to mock 3, three times the speed of sound. we could even hear the sonic booms here. we'll have to wait and see. they'll have a few minutes climbing up to space where they will experience a few minutes of weightlessness. they'll be traveling about 50 miles above earth. that is the u.s. boundary for space, so it will just be touching the edge of space before touching back down to earth making a glide touchdown, and that's when we expect the crowds to go wild here at spaceport america, so richard branson making this historic flight that for him is two decades in the making. you know, he bought the technology to spaceship 1 that made the exprise in 2001. after seeing that, richard branson, who has always wanted to go to space, he says, since he saw the apollo landings on

the moon back when he was a child, he bought that technology, and he thought maybe it would be five years before he's making his journey to space. as we can see, it's taken a lot longer than that. there's always delays, delays. as we saw even this morning, up to the last minute there is even weather delays, fareed. but everyone here on the ground getting very excited. they're blasting music behind me, picking up the energy for everybody here who has come from all over the world to witness this historic space flight. in fact, one of the mission specialists on board, she's an indian american, her parents traveling from india to watch their daughter who will be conducting the research payloads on board. they'll actually be doing a research study on gene expression of plants during the suborbital flight. so it's not just about joyrides to space, there are also research payloads that virgin galactic have been flying on these recent test flights.

for our viewers, it's important to remember that this is still a test flight. virgin galactic saying they don't expect to start their commercial operations until the beginning of 2022, and as a result they're taking extra safety precautions. everybody on board will be, in fact, wearing a parachute. the company has not said if that will continue beyond the test flight program, but everybody on board today, we know that they will be wearing parachutes with their space suits. also supplemental oxygen on board for the paenssengers. we'll see i ammages from insidee cabins on the livestream. the pilots wear oxygen. the passengers do not. this is still the fourth test flight for virgin galactic to date. they will have the ability, if there is cabin depressurization, to put oxygen masks on. also mike moses, the safety for

virgin galactic telling me they have four times the amount of oxygen on board to continue to keep it pressurized, fareed. >> thank you, rachel. kristin, you heard rachel describing the showbiz element to all this. st stephen colbert, big, big plans, so many songs, things like that. do we know if jeff bezos with blue or enigins is going to do something similar? he doesn't need to raise money like richard branson does. is he foregoing the pr or is he doing another one of these mega events? >> reporter: he's also a very different person in charge of a very different kind of company. over the years blue origin has been much more quiet and secretive in materials of what they do than the much flashier virgin galactic. what we're going to see when

jeff bezos launches on blue origin's new shepard vehicle in a few days in texas is a much quieter affair, most likely. they'll have fewer press, fewer events, fewer things for people to enjoy when they're actually on-site, but that's just kind of the culture and the if iphiloso of these two companies. blue origin does things slowly and quietly, virgin galactic much louder and flashier, just like their founders. the other key difference is the two different types of spacecrafts and the difference sp between them is just huge. you take a look at virgin galactic's spaceship 2 and it looks like just a spaceship, very similar to nasa's space shuttle. one of the things we have not talked about is just how much the test pilots love it, because they can actually fly it.

the pilots are still responsible for firing the rocket engine, for turning it off, and for deploying that feathering system that allows the spaceship to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. if you're a test pilot, this is a fun spaceship to fly because you're in control of it, which is why so many nasa space astronauts love fly the space shuttle. the down side is it can be a little more dangerous like we saw with the two shuttle accidents and we saw inner accident in 2014 with virgin galactic when it was actually a co-pilot's error that led to his death, a terrible tragedy that the virgin galactic team had a very tough time recovering from. but they have, and we're here today. on the other side of this, you have blue origin's spaceship which is much more your traditional rocket and cap actual. think of the apollo saturn 5 rocket. it's vertical, you have a rocket, a capsule on top. it goes straight up, straight

down, there are no wings on it, and it does have an escape system. so if something happens, that capsule on top can jetjettison y from it. they feel so confident they're putting jeff bezos on top of it in a few days. but they also feel very confident about the safety of this vehicle. this will be their fourth crude test flight up into space, the first time it is fuellylly crew. one other thing, fareed, it was such a treat to see how richard branson decided to get to spaceport america today. one of the reasons he talked so much about going up into space is the positive effect it can have on humanity in terms of making them more environmentally conscious, so richard branson choosing to ride his own bike to spaceport america this morning. quite a sight. >> there you see the plane

taxiing, presumably getting ready. at the very least we're getting closer to the point where we will see some kind of takeoff. neil, what do you think of that idea that people like branson and others have talked about, that maybe if more people get up into space, they will realize how fragile the ecosystem is, how small we are, the chance -- we tend to have a view that nature is benign. nature is going to take care of us. the more perspective you gain, you realize nature is just physics, chemistry and biology and it can go pretty seriously awry. >> yes. and what we should do, in all the first voyages to orbit, we should send all the politicians. they'll come back different, all right, in an important way, because consider a point made earlier, that from space you don't see national boundaries. you can see cities at night, that's kind of interesting, but national boundaries disappear. whereas a politician exists

completely within a mindset of national boundaries. so these perspectives, these overview effect as nasa describes it, in my field we call it a cosmic perspective, it can change you. and it generally only changes you for the better. it makes you more hucmble. it makes you more respectful of earth as an ecosystem that sustains us. it's so easy to think about your own little circumstances and your own moment and your own place. it's one of the sort of benefits of having gone into space in the first place. you will just look at how people have started thirnking about earth, the climate -- here's another thing to notice. any illustration of earth before 1965, before the gemini and apollo, nobody drew clouds on earth. if they said draw earth, they

would just draw couldn'ntinents the earth and that's it. by the way, the atmospheric layer is not very thick. in fact, the atmosphere is to earth as the skin of an apple is to the apple. and you get to see that from space. and you can say, oh, my gosh. i'm not sitting at the base of this ocean of air, i am a participant in this thin layer or something that sustains me and the rest of the ecosystem, maybe i should take better care of it. >> and it can break very easily, as you just demonstrated by eating the apple. rachel crane, i'm wondering, you said we were probably five to seven minutes away. as happens about these things, has that been pushed off a little bit? >> reporter: well, fareed, i have to tell you, i butterflies

-- have butterflies in my stomach. i have use on the unity. it's at the end of the runway. it taxietaxied moments ago. we are at the beginning of this test flight. fareed, it is starting to move. this thing is taking off today. and as we were talking about this whole time, this flight is two decades in the making, richard branson saying he has dreamed of this day, going to space since he was a child. two decades in the making here. the whole team at virgin galactic, they've been talking about richard's flight, richard's flight since the beginning of the company. today is the day. you hear the cheering behind me, fareed? there it is. for a moment it went silent. this thing is about to take off. we have liftoff, fareed, of

spaceship america, mother eve unity, richard branson making his flight to space, the spacecraft that he and virgin galactic created. that is a beautiful sight to see. space enthusiasts around the world, we have been following the journey of this company, the tenaciousness and the passion they have poured into this program, and to see this take off with sir richard branson, the company's founder, wow. let me tell you what the next few moments will be like. for about 40 minutes, vss unity and eve will be mated together. they'll be climbing to an altitude of about 40,000 to 50,000 feet. that's when vss unity will be released from mothership eve. it will be in free fall for a few seconds.

after that, the rocket will ignite. the passengers on board will experience about 3g's. the motor will be cut and that's when the passengers will express a few moments of weightlessness, the moment richard branson has been waiting for since he was a child. hopefully we'll get views from inside the cabin. after those moments of weightless, the mission will be deployed and the pilots and the passengers will glide back to earth here at spacesport america, and in typical richard branson style, they have created quite an event around this space flight. we know there will be a musical performance by khaled and lots of people in the audience, richard branson's friends and family have come, but we know that elon musk also in the crowd

today to wish branson well. jeff bezos also tweeting, or rather posting on instagram, well wishes to richard branson and the virgin galactic team. that's because beside the competitive team between the space billionaires, a win today for virgin galactic and sir richard branson is a win for the entire aerospace community. these people, everybody, they do this because they're passionate about it, because they're all mission driven. the people at virgin galactic and richard branson say their goal is to democratize space, having the overeffect, seeing the curvature of the earth and seeing the earth without boundaries and getting a sense that we are all just travelers on spaceship earth. everybody who has traveled to space speaks about how it fundamentally changes them and

they become environmentalists and stewards of earth. that's really the mission, opening up that final frontier of space, allowing more people to travel. of course, everybody highlights, after i say that, the price tag right now. we know about 600 people have paid around $200,000 a seat to get a ticket to ride on virgin galactic's system. they've been waiting for a very long time to take that flight. today signals that they are a big step closer to taking a flight themselves. now, i also want to point out blue origin, who is virgin galactic's direct competitor here, they have not yet sold their tickets, but jeff bezos plans to take his historical flight on new shepherd on july 20th. his space kcraft is automated.

there are no pilots on board. today is the fourth crude space flight for virgin galactic. blue origin have not started sell their tickets, we don't know what the going price will be, but we do know one person has paid $28 million to make history with blue origin and be inside that spacecraft. today is all about virgin galactic and richard branson. hopefully we'll get to see those images of richard branson and the specialists weightless in space, fareed. >> racheneil, let me ask you ab the things rachel talked about. what we need to start thinking about is living and working in space. i think the way bezos puts it is you want to live and work in space for the benefits of earth. you move things like heavy

manufacturing to places up in space. elon musk talks about living and potentially dying on mars. is this all -- >> i would rather die on mars than live -- >> -- without having traveled -- so my question to you is, is this conceivable that in ten years some of this stuff will start happening? >> people began predicting, right after we landed on the moon, that in about ten years we would have people living and working in space. we came nowhere near that. the few people on the space station, that was it, the international space station. let -- let me talk about space from a different angle. they have more rare earth elements on it than have ever been mined on earth. there are comments that they have more fresh water on them

than any fresh water supply on earth, and there they are just flying by, minding their own business. so the idea that on earth we have to solve our earth problems first before we go out into space, to me it kind of sounds like a conversation that might have happened in a cave 35,000 years ago. you get some intrepid next generation, i want to go outside the cave and look and see what's there. the elder says, no, we have cave problems. solve the cave problems first before you go outside. that's kind of what it looks like to me. >> i want us to solve cave problems and problems outside the cave, but i do wonder, i mean -- look, what do i know? you look at the movie "the martian," and you're reminded there is no oxygen on mars. it's not going to be that easy to live and work in places where you're wearing space suits, you've got oxygen. this seems a little harder than people make it sound.

>> space is hard, yes, space is dangerous, yes, and we're all hopeful that this mission today goes off without a hitch. but by the way, let me call to your attention that after the challenger disaster and we had this public funeral for all the fallen astronauts, to a person everyone asked of the family members, should we stop this exploration in space? is it too dangerous? to a person they said, no, you have to continue in honor of their loss, you have to continue so they do not die in vain. it was a year when we had more people ascending mt. everest than ever before, in subsequent years, even more people wanted to climb it? the idea is there is a frontier to be breached behind the energy and inspiration of some of the members of our species. that's what got us out of our cave in the first place. >> i believe it was john brennan

who said we don't go into space because it's easy, we go because it's hard. we'll be back in a moment and look to the skies as richard branson is going into space.

we are back as richard branson goes to space. neil didegrasse tyson is here wh me in new york, kristin fisher and rachel crane at the space

center in new mexico. u what is your sense of that plane as it was taking off, how fast does it go and why do pilots love flying it? >> they love flying it because they're actually flying it. much like the space shuttle, this is a pretty much fully analog plane in the sense that these pilots are the ones firing those rocket engines, turning them off and then deploying the space plane's feathering system to allow it to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. you know what i was thinking about, it was ten years ago this month that nasa retired a very similar-looking spacecraft, the space shuttle. it took nearly a decade before the united states was able to launch american astronauts from u.s. soil again. during that dry spell, we had to launch american astronauts on a russian rocket. during that time, look at what the commercial space industry

was able to accomplish. both jeff bezos' blue origin and elon musk's spacex was able to deliver usable rockets. they were able to send astronauts to the national space station, hundreds of payloads. now today we have richard branson laurnching into space i the spacecraft he helped fund and spent years developing. during the ten years while the space shuttle was retired, there was such a waning interest in space. now if you have any doubt about whether people are interested in space again, the livestream carrying this launch, it just had about 400,000 people watching on youtube. space is back. >> let me ask you, rachel, we talk a lot about the private sector, which is right, but if you look at elon musk's company, if you look at basic funding, the government is still a very large player here.

i assume there are good relations between nasa and richard branson's company, blue origin, and we know with elon musk, of course, because they are the principal funder and customer for spacex. >> reporter: yes, you're right, fareed. the faa highly involved in the laurchl here today. in fact, the whole reason that richard branson was able to board this flight, accelerate his timeline for his first space flight was because the faa granted virgin galactic an updated license for what they call space flight participants. the faa, virgin galactic in compliance with the faa working very closely on this launch as well as future launches. same thing with blue origin. also interesting to point out, the faa are focused on the safety of the people and the property here on the ground, but not actually the people in the spacecraft. so they actually sign a waiver,

an informed consent, kind of like a bungee jumper does, so the faa are not regulating yet the passengers on board the spacecraft. there are calls for more regulation in the near future. it is yet to be seen what will happen with that, but right now they're flying under informed consent, like i said, much like a bungee jumper does. i have to return to the moment we experienced here at spaceport america just about ten minutes ago. seeing vss unity and eve take off after nearly two decades, fareed, i had goosebumps all over my body. everybody here at spaceport america had their chins, their eyes pointed to the sky to take in this historic moment, fareed. >> rachel, so great to have you and that enthusiasm which you are clearly reflecting what is going on with the crowd out there. neil, i want to pick up on something rachel mentioned.

we're talking about this suborbital stuff, yeah, it's been done before, but it is rir risky and it's interesting they made them sign a waiver while they're up in space. the fact richard branson paid for it himself, that's significant. >>i >> elon musk says, let's go on a trip to mars. i won't do that until he takes his mother, then i'll judge that it's safe enough. they have literal skin in the game, and i think that sends an important message to any future customers that might consider buying a seat, of course. >> as we continue exploring space, neil, you write about this in your book, so i have to ask you, are we alone or are we going to find people out there?

>> i think it's one of the greatest unanswered questions that we have ever posed to ourselves as a species. you look up at night and you just wonder, are we alone? in the early days before we had visited the planet, are there life forms on all the other planets, now on other planets. we have over 4,000 exoplanets in the catalogs today. i spent a whole section on our efforts of trying to determine whether or not we are alone in the universe. i'll just say the ingredients we're made of, the hydrogen, the oxygen, the carbon, carbon-based life, you look at those ingredients and say, wait a minute, these ingredients are everywhere we look. and on earth, these ingredients replicate life really quickly. we have the ingredients, the time doesn't seem to matter here, so we have really high hopes and expectations to

discover life elsewhere in the united universe. it's a completely different question whether life came to visit navy pilots where we have 3 billion life forms, because everybody has a high-resolution video camera. >> i always come back to the part of thinking exactly what you're describing, the fact that we are a collection of chemicals and equations. >> some of my best friends are made of chemicals. >> exactly, and that, you know, it gives me a feeling of the fragility of life that, you know, when you look at the pandemic, when you look at global warming, you just realize to yourself take good care, because if these chemicals get out of balance, things can go seriously awry. there isn't a generous, benign mother nature out there looking

after us. >> not only that, when you look at earth from space, a point made by carl sagan in his book "the pale blue dot," you look and find there is emptiness, and there isn't anyone coming to save us from ourselves. the more knowledge we can glean about the safety of earth, the ecosystem, the water in the atmosphere, the better shepherds we can be for future generations to come. otherwise we might as well just move back to the cave or prepare for our own extinction. >> from alex shepard's mission to be good shepherds, neal, chkristin fisher, rachel crane, thank you for being part of this "global public square." live coverage continues with brian stelter right now. i'm brian stelter live in

new york picking up cnn's live coverage of what is a new space race on earth, taking off from earth heading up to the edge of space. in just a few minutes that is where richard branson and the other passengers aboard unity 22, that's where they're going to reach. you can see about 20 minutes ago, the aircraft, the mother ship, taking off down this 12,500-foot runway in rural new mexico. we've seen the mother ship take off, now we're waiting for that pivotal moment when the rocket will blast and when the space plane will actually reach the edge of space. to give you a sense of timing, we are expecting that in the next 20 minutes, and once we reach that point, that is when branson and the other passengers will experience weightlessness and will earn their astronaut wings. in the next few minutes, we'll watch it happen live here on cnn. let's begin by heading to