Avid readers of Vulcan Post would know that we are big fans of Jack Ma and we have written much about it. Another prominent leader and entrepreneur whom is equally if not more prominent than Jack Ma, is definitely Sir Richard Branson.
Richard Brandson is known for founding The Virgin Group, which own several businesses including Virgin Airlines. One of the biggest and most ambitious companies Richard is working on is the Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic plans to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launches for space science missions, and orbital launches of small satellites. Further in the future, Virgin Galactic hopes to offer orbital human spaceflights as well.
Virgin Galactic will soon be ready to launch its first flight and approximately 700 people, including wealthy businessmen, celebrities and Branson’s own family, have signed up to be passengers on the first commercial flight into space.
Recently, The Virgin Group founder has announced that once Virgin Galactic has successfully begun giving tours of outer space, he will turn his attention to another revolutionary endeavor.
What is the other revolutionary endeavor he has in mind?
Richard Branson wants to make supersonic planes that can travel from New York to Tokyo in an hour.
“After we’ve done the space program, we will be producing supersonic planes, which will go far, far, faster than [the] Concorde,” Branson told CNBC, in reference to the retired British commercial flights that could fly from New York to London in just three hours.
“If we get it right, New York to Tokyo could be less than an hour,” the Virgin Group founder told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “You could be traveling at 19,000 miles per hour orbitally.”
Also read: From rags to riches: The story behind Forever 21 cofounders
Branson is the second entrepreneur who is disrupting the old and traditional transportation industry. The first entrepreneur I know is Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Tesla is one of the world’s leading producer of electric cars, while SpaceX is another ambitious plan of Musk’s to send human to outer space, similar to Virgin Galactic.
On top of that, Musk also famously open sourced a transportation system called Hyperloop, a conceptual high-speed transportation system which runs from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, paralleling the Interstate 5 corridor for most of its length, with an expected journey time of only 35 minutes. Currently the travel time between two cities is slightly more than 5 hours.
Musk encourages people to take up the project as he is currently focusing on growing and building Tesla as well as SpaceX.
Both Branson and Musk are revolutionary entrepreneurs whom are changing the world as we speak. Would we see a Branson or Musk from Asia soon?
There are definitely a lot of rooms for improvement and innovation in the transport industry in Southeast Asia.
