TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. (AP):

Swashbuckling billionaire Richard Branson hurtled into space aboard his own winged rocket ship Sunday, bringing astro-tourism a step closer to reality and beating out his exceedingly richer rival Jeff Bezos.

The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space-tourism company reached an altitude of 53.5 miles over the New Mexico desert – enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and witness the curvature of the Earth – and then glided back home to a runway landing.

“The whole thing, it was just magical,” a jubilant Branson said on his return aboard the gleaming white space plane, named Unity.

The brief, up-and-down flight – the space plane’s portion took only about 15 minutes, or about as long as Alan Shepard’s first US spaceflight in 1961 – was a splashy and unabashedly commercial plug for Virgin Galactic, which plans to start taking paying customers on joyrides next year.

Branson became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Bezos, the richest person on the planet, by nine days.

Bezos sent his congratulations, adding: “Can’t wait to join the club!” – though he also took to Twitter a couple of days earlier to enumerate the ways in which be believes his company’s tourist rides will be better.

With about 500 people watching, including Branson’s family, Unity was carried aloft underneath a twin-fuselage aircraft. Then, at an altitude of about 8 1/2 miles, Unity detached from the mother ship and fired its engine, reaching more than Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, as it pierced the edge of space.

Spectators cheered, jumped into the air and embraced as the rocket plane touched down on Earth. Branson pumped his fists as he stepped out on to the runway and ran toward his family, bear-hugging his wife and children and scooping up his grandchildren in his arms.