BACK in the day, only superpowers had the wherewithal to battle it out in the space race. Now the super-rich can join in the game.

Last week billionaire Sir Richard Branson reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane.

The UK entrepreneur flew high above New Mexico in the US in the vehicle that his company has been developing for 17 years.

The trip was, he said, the “experience of a lifetime”.

He returned safely to Earth just over an hour after leaving the ground.

“I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space,” he said in a press conference following the flight.

“The whole thing was just magical.”

READ MORE: Richard Branson hails flight to the edge of space as ‘experience of a lifetime’

The trip also makes him the first of the new space tourism pioneers to try out their own vehicles, beating Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

Not that he made it quite into space – just the edge of it.

But it beats the real world, where the coronavirus virus still rages (I do hope space isn’t on the red list) and there’s climate Armageddon looming (wouldn’t his billions be better spent saving the planet rather than gazing at it from afar?).

Branson billed the flight as a test of the space tourism experience he expects to begin selling to customers from next year.

Some 600 people have already paid deposits for tickets that will cost them up to $250,000 (£180,000).

To iniquity and beyond … Branson said: “I’ve had my notebook with me and I’ve written down 30 or 40 little things that will make the experience for the next person who goes to space with us that much better.

“The only way sometimes you can find these little things is to get in a spaceship and go to space and experience it for yourself.”

Thanks, Sir Richard. You really do go the extra mile.

If space tourism does, literally, take off I hope it’s unencumbered by any future pandemics, although I’m sure Branson would not be slow in asking the government for a hand-out should his space fleet be grounded.

Meanwhile, Bezos and his Blue Origin team will reach for the stars on Tuesday, taking a short flight up to space before coming back down to Earth.

Blue Origin has argued that it will be the first commercial spaceflight of this kind, because Branson’s trip does not truly count – and has also criticised Virgin Galactic for its “smaller windows”.

The stakes are indeed high in the race for space.

Such gravitas in the quest for zero gravity.

But no-one’s going to burst Branson’s bubble any time soon.

He tweeted: “I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth.

“To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do.”

Does Branson not know that in space, no-one can hear you dream?