Richard Branson’s Head Dude Says Commecial Space Flight Won’t Be As Safe “as the modern airliner”

January 23rd, 2008

Here’s the full quote from Mr. Rutan, Richard Branson’s head of Virgin Galactic space flight operation: “Don’t believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of new spaceships will be as safe as the modern airliner”. That’s probably exactly what you DON’T want to say when trying to sell the-yet-released million dollar-a-ride commercial space flight program. Nonetheless, Virgin Galactic already has over 200 “firm reservations” and $30 million in deposits. More importantly, and hence the true purpose of this article, is that Rutan revealed Virgin Galactics new space craft today (as seen above) called SpaceShipTwo. Although flights won’t begin until 2009 or 2010, Branson’s space planes are more then half way to completion. Space PLANES you ask? SpaceShipTwo will carry the actual passenger in space, while WhiteKnightTwo, a glorified carrier plane, will carry SpaceShipTwo high into the sky for release. Currently, Virgina Galactic is putting some of it’s tentative passengers through G force testing as I recently saw on MSNBC.

Entry Filed under: Business, Science, Space