Richard Branson is the Thomas Cook of space travel

When Sir Richard Branson blasted off into space on Sunday he broke – or rather established – several important records. While he wasn’t the first billionaire to go into space – the extra-terrestrial ten-digit honours belong to Hungarian-born Microsoft Office software magnate Charles Simonyi, who went up to space on a Russian rocket in 2007 – Branson was the first man (billionaire or no) to go to space in a rocket that he had funded and built himself. For what it’s worth, he’s also the first knight of the realm to go into space, which has a certain anachronistic cachet, like a time-travelling Roman senator.

In achieving his ambition, which began with the foundation of Virgin Galactic in 2004, Sir Richard has also pipped at least one vastly richer American to the post. Jeff Bezos – worth in the order of $212 billion – is expected to blast off into the never-never aboard his Blue Origin rocket New Shepard, named in honour the first American in space Alan Shepard, in the coming days, while Elon Musk, whose SpaceX corporation is working on plans to get to Mars, may well have higher ambitions altogether.