Rutan, Branson form new spaceship company
Associated Press Newswires 07/28/05
Copyright 2005. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Space entrepreneurs Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have announced plans to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and equipment.
Called The Spaceship Company, the enterprise will be jointly owned by the Britain-based Virgin Group and Mojave, Calif.-based Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShipOne, the rocket that made the first private manned spaceflight on June 21, 2004, and then won the $10 million Ansari X Prize with two more suborbital flights last year.
The announcement by Virgin founder Branson and Scaled's Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, was made this week at the 53rd annual Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis.
Last fall, the British billionaire Branson signed an agreement with Rutan to build a commercial passenger spacecraft based on SpaceShipOne for its new subsidiary Virgin Galactic.
The new partnership allows The Spaceship Company to own the intellectual property of Scaled's new spaceship designs and market them to spaceline operators including Virgin Galactic, said Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic.
Scaled is currently designing SpaceShipTwo and its carrier plane White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic has ordered two motherships and five SpaceShipTwos, which can carry seven passengers and a two-person crew.
Rutan's design uses an airplane to carry the spaceship to high altitude before it is released and its rocket ignited.
Virgin Galactic hopes to operate space flights by the end of 2008. Fares will start at $200,000.
The location of the headquarters for The Spaceship Company has not yet been determined.
Jay
Associated Press Newswires 07/28/05
Copyright 2005. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Space entrepreneurs Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have announced plans to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and equipment.
Called The Spaceship Company, the enterprise will be jointly owned by the Britain-based Virgin Group and Mojave, Calif.-based Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShipOne, the rocket that made the first private manned spaceflight on June 21, 2004, and then won the $10 million Ansari X Prize with two more suborbital flights last year.
The announcement by Virgin founder Branson and Scaled's Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, was made this week at the 53rd annual Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis.
Last fall, the British billionaire Branson signed an agreement with Rutan to build a commercial passenger spacecraft based on SpaceShipOne for its new subsidiary Virgin Galactic.
The new partnership allows The Spaceship Company to own the intellectual property of Scaled's new spaceship designs and market them to spaceline operators including Virgin Galactic, said Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic.
Scaled is currently designing SpaceShipTwo and its carrier plane White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic has ordered two motherships and five SpaceShipTwos, which can carry seven passengers and a two-person crew.
Rutan's design uses an airplane to carry the spaceship to high altitude before it is released and its rocket ignited.
Virgin Galactic hopes to operate space flights by the end of 2008. Fares will start at $200,000.
The location of the headquarters for The Spaceship Company has not yet been determined.
Jay