Talk about a jump scare!
In a new interview with The Sunday Times, billionaire Richard Branson revealed that the night before his first flight with his space exploration company Virgin Galactic, he was paid a surprise visit by Elon Musk and his then-infant son, X Æ A-12.
“I woke up two hours earlier than I was meant to and jumped out of bed, and then actually realized I’d got the wrong time, but by then I was wide awake,” Branson said of the early morning hours of July 11, 2021, which he thinks was around 2:30 a.m.
Branson was at his home in New Mexico at the time.
After waking up, Branson said he walked to his kitchen only to find a shoeless Musk (holding his son) who had “decided to surprise” him to wish him good luck ahead of the voyage.
“Basically, he’s a night animal. He doesn’t really sleep at night and gets his sleep in the daytime,” Branson said. “We made a pot of tea and sat outside under the stars and caught up.”
The billionaires documented their impromptu meeting on Twitter, which Musk would go on to purchase less than one year later.
— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 11, 2021
After Branson’s flight landed, Musk stood at the launchpad in support.
Branson also referred to Musk as the “Henry Ford of his generation” and called him “tremendously smart and even more driven.”
Musk’s space exploration company, SpaceX, completed the first-ever private human vehicle flight in 2020 with the Dragon. Musk himself has yet to make the voyage.
Virgin Galactic is set to begin launching commercial space flights in the second quarter of 2023.