During the EAA Air Venture aviation show Virgin Galactic gave a press conference and announced the signing of an agreement between the Virgin Group of companies and Scaled Composites to form a new aerospace production company.

The Spaceship Company will build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. This new company will own the designs of the new SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and WhiteKnight (WK2) launch systems that are now in development at Scaled Composites.

The SS2/WK2 will use the same rocket motor and wing-feathering technology as SS1 and will license the technology from Paul Allen’s Mojave Aerospace Company.

Burt Rutan commented – “I am very excited to have agreed the terms on which we can now move forward to develop the world’s first commercial, passenger-carrying spaceships.”

Richard Branson added, “Over the last three decades many people gave up hope – luckily people like Burt Rutan never did. Like many millions of people growing up in the sixties who witnessed the wonder of man walking on the moon – I dreamt that one day too I would make that one small step.”

Source: Virgin Galactic