Virgin Galactic launches commercial flights for space tourists

For years, British billionaire Richard Branson vowed that commercial space flights with his firm Virgin Galactic were just around the corner.

On Thursday, that hype finally became reality when three Italian researchers boarded the VSS Unity space plane as Virgin Galactic's first paying passengers and flew about four minutes in suborbital space.

The researchers — Col. Walter Villadei and Lt. Col. Angelo