Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Tuesday, July 6th.

U.S. wages are up, oil prices are down, and we're focused on the billionaire space race.

This Sunday, Richard Branson is scheduled to blast off on a suborbital test flight for Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company he founded back in 2004.

He'll be joined by two pilots and three other mission specialists and will be trying to accomplish two things.

First, realize a lifelong dream of traveling to space.

Second, getting there before fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, who scheduled to fly with his space company, Blue Origin, in two weeks from today. On that flight, Blue Origin won. Bezos will be

joined by other civilians, including the still unknown person who paid $28 million in an auction for the

privilege. Why it matters is there's a lot more riding on these rockets than just billionaires.

Were anything catastrophic to happen to either flight, there could be enormous consequences

for the entire private space industry, and in particular for the concept of space tourism.

The FAA currently is not regulating the safety of the participants on these flights, instead just worrying about

the people and property on the ground below, but that would probably change in a hurry if something

were to happen to ordinary civilians catching a ride, and in particular, if one of the civilians

is a household name.

So today we want to speak with Axiospace editor Miriam Kramer about what Branson and

Bezos are actually doing, how it's different from what Elon Musk and SpaceX are doing,

and what these flights mean for the future of space travel. That conversation after the

break. And as a quick editorial note, today's program is indeed sponsored by Amazon, which Jeff

Bezos was CEO of until yesterday.

But sponsorship does not impact editorial content.

We're joined now by Merriam Kramer, author of the weekly Axios Space newsletter.

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