- Speaking to the BBC at the Mojave Air and Space Port, Whitesides said the company is on track for lift-off “maybe sooner, but not much longer”, despite being some way off finishing the replacement for its crashed SpaceShipTwo.
- While the final NTSB report into the accident is due in few weeks, Virgin Galactic is “confident the crash wasn’t due to a design issue”. The BBC reports that on the new SpaceShipTwo “it’ll be made physically harder to unlock the feathering system at the wrong time”.
- While it might be imagined that the crash seriously rattled future SpaceShipTwo passengers, who’ve already stumped $250,000 a head for a ticket, Whitesides insisted: “The vast majority of our customers, so about 98 per cent, have been really terrific, very supportive.