English business magnate Richard Branson on Thursday said his Virgin Galactic venture is eager to rejoin the race among rival billionaire entrepreneurs to send passengers and satellites into space, following a deadly accident 16 months ago.
“To have three or four people who are fairly entrepreneurial competing with each other means we’ll be able to open up space at a fraction of the price that governments have been able to do so in the past,” Branson said as he toured Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne plant in Long Beach, California.
On Friday next week, Virgin Galactic plans to unveil its new SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot, winged space plane designed to take thrill-seekers, researchers and commercial customers on five-minute hops into suborbital space, reaching altitudes of about 100km.
Virgin Galactic is moving ahead with plans to build its own space launchers, including the new passenger vehicle and LauncherOne rockets designed to lift small satellites starting as early as next year, company officials said.
Branson’s rivals in the privately funded space race include SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen.
Branson’s venture has been grounded since its first spaceship, designed and built by Northrop Grumman Corp’s Scaled Composites, was destroyed on Oct. 31, 2014, during a test flight in the desert near Mojave, California. The accident killed one pilot and dashed Virgin Galactic’s plans to start commercial operations as early as this year.
The US’ National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the accident, determined that the copilot prematurely released locks that pin the ship’s rotating tail section into place. The new spaceship includes a pin that prevents the pilots from unlocking the tail section too early.
The Spaceship Company, or TSC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Virgin Galactic, already had taken over manufacturing of the second spaceship in a planned fleet of five when the accident occurred.
“Ultimately, we want to be able to produce our own point-to-point aircraft,” Branson said. “The best way to do that is to be involved with every aspect of the experimentation and the build.”
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