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This is"a pure piece of risk capital and it is based upon the fact that we perceived at the time that the only way this was ever going to happen was if we did it. This is a high-risk venture," says Virgin Galactic president and 20-year Virgin group public relations veteran Will Whitehorn, reflecting on the origins of his spaceline at its headquarters in Piccadilly, London. For $200,000 per seat that spaceline is offering in the next few years a few minutes of weightlessness with a cabin to float around in at a 110km (68miles) apogee during a 90min trip.The...

Virgin Galactic's suborbital rocket glider SpaceShipTwo (SS2) could have a low wing and its carrier aircraft, White Knight II (WK2), a 43m (140ft) wingspan and four engines, chief designer Burt Rutan has said. Rutan, chief executive of Scaled Composites and a director of the Virgin Group-Scaled WK2/SS2 intellectual rights joint venture The Spaceship Company, revealed the possible design changes at the Responsibility for the Future Exploration and Development of Space Symposium, held at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on 25 August. In Virgin Galactic's conceptual images, SS2 has a mid-wing, unlike its predecessor SpaceShipOne (SS1), and WK2 has two...

MOJAVE, California -- Nobody can claim that Burt Rutan, the innovative aerospace designer, doesn’t have his head in the clouds…and his eyes focused on the stars. Fresh from success of nudging the piloted SpaceShipOne’s nose to record-setting heights and capturing the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have clearly set their sights on far loftier goals.