Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and spaceship builder Scaled Composites have come together in a partnership to help promote space tourism, CNET reports. The two have formed The Spaceship Company, who boldly claim, “We build spaceships.”
The Spaceship Company formally opened what it calls FAITH on Monday, the final assembly facility for SpaceShip Two and the WhiteKnight Two, the aircraft onto which it piggybacks. Virgin Galactic also showed a replica of SpaceShip One and the actual WhiteKnight One, their first public appearance.
Scaled Composites has award-winning experience building spaceships, CNET noted. In 2004, SpaceShip One won founder Burt Rutan and his team the X Prize for being the first team to ever fly a privately manned craft into space. The ship, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has since flown three times into space. It is one permanent display at the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Virgin Galactic has also contracted with Scaled Composites in the past, and many see the continued partnership as the dawn of the age of space tourism. Already, the company has booked $60 million worth of flights from people in 46 countries, CNET said.
“Our aspiration…is to open space up to dramatically more people and uses than ever before,” said The Spaceship Company CEO George Whiteside. “The Spaceship Company is building its first vehicles now and we have high hopes that there will be more to come.”
Virgin hopes to be able to send SpaceShip Two for its initial test flights sometime next year.
