Billionaire Richard Branson takes off on Sunday from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel bound for the edge of space, a voyage he hopes will lift the nascent space tourism industry off the ground. Inset: Richard Branson(L) receives cards from children as he walked out of Spaceport America, near Truth and Consequences, New Mexico on Sunday. Photo: AFP

As famous for his thrill-seeking lifestyle and publicity stunts as for his vast business empire, Richard Branson can now check "astronaut" off his to-do list after successfully completing his first spaceflight.

The avowed Star Trek fan attributed his drive and taste for adventure to his mother Eve, who died from COVID-19 in January. 

"Dear Mum, you always told me to reach for the stars. Well, I took my own winding road, but I always knew to follow your lead," he said in a video tribute that aired before the VSS Unity spaceplane took off on Sunday.

The Virgin group boss, whose net worth amounts to $5.7 billion according to Forbes magazine, made his initial fortune in the record industry in the 1970s.

The London-born entrepreneur, now 70, has since launched a string of successful companies in sectors as diverse as railways and mobile phones, as well as Virgin Atlantic airlines.

But there have been plenty of missteps.

His failures include a short-lived attempt at Formula One racing, a stab at the soft drinks market with Virgin Cola, and a wedding company called Virgin Bride, which some said existed only because of the name.

Branson was said to have been a below-average student who suffered from dyslexia, with his headmaster at a private school in southern England apparently telling him he would either go to prison or become a millionaire. 

He set up Virgin Records when he was just 20 and earned his first million pounds($1.3 million) three years later, buying his own Caribbean island a few years afterwards. 

The record label's breakthrough came with Tubular Bells, a 1973 instrumental album by the British musician Mike Oldfield, which sold millions of copies.

His mother was a flight attendant, so perhaps he was following in the family footsteps when he set up his airline in 1984.

But his business practices and publicity stunts since then have irked many.

In 2006, it emerged that Virgin Atlantic and British Airways had engaged in price fixing, though his firm avoided any punishment because they tipped off the authorities.

And in 2020, Branson asked the British government for 500 million pounds to help Virgin Atlantic weather the economic fallout of the COVID-19 lockdown, despite having paid no income tax for more than a decade. Politicians accused him of "milking the system."

In 2012, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper compared Branson to the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange "in that both believe the world revolves around them." 

Much of the publicity surrounding Branson over the years has been based around his adventuring, yet these exploits brought him close to tragedy in 1998, when he and his co-pilot were forced to ditch their balloon in the Pacific Ocean after low pressure forced the craft down.

AFP