Fifty years ago almost to the day, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human being to land on the moon. Now, it seems mankind may be ready for its next giant leap. This month, British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic said it would merge with Social Capital Hedosophia, or SCH, in a deal that would give it access to the capital markets and propel its plans to fly people to the edge of space within a year. Virgin Galactic will be the first publicly traded space-tourism company in the world. The deal puts fuel in the engines of Virgin Galactic to compete in the space travel business with Blue Origin — owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — and SpaceX, founded by Tesla CEO and cofounder Elon Musk. Virgin Galactic is ready to go: Following two successful manned launches earlier this year, the company said in a statement that it has reached an “inflection point” in the development of commercial spaceflight for a safe experience.…