Billionaire space race the 2016 International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson elaborated on the Bezos vision previously outlined in the New Glenn announcement. The Blue Origin New Armstrong would be similar in function to the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System that Elon Musk unveiled at the same conference. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are in the same market, suborbital space tourism, with New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo (Tier 1b), respectively. They are in a race to be first to launch paying customers on short spaceshots, with rival technological philosophies of space capsules and spaceplanes, respectively Virgin Galactic and SpaceX support
Virgin Mobile internet access costs QAR1 per 1MB. Richard Branson, chairman of UK-based Virgin Group, said: "Virgin Mobile [has] more than 15 million customers around the world ... I am proud to have partnered with Qtel to make Virgin Mobile Qatar our first mobile launch in the Middle East." The service is the eighth Virgin Mobile branded operation in the world, following on from launches in the UK, Australia, the US, Canada, France, South Africa and India. Branson added that Virgin Group is mulling further partnerships with Qtel, which has a group presence in 17 countries. Virgin Mobile Qatar caused some confusion