Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company within the Virgin Group. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists. Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecrafts are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic's founder, Richard Branson, had originally hoped to see a maiden flight by the end of 2009, but the date was delayed for several years, most seriously by the October 2014 in-flight crash of VSS Enterprise. As of 2020, the first passenger flight was planned for no earlier than May 2021. The company did the early work on the satellite launch development of LauncherOne before this was hived off to a separate company Virgin Orbit in 2017. The company also has aspirations for suborbital transport and in 2017, Branson has said that Virgin Galactic was "in the best position in the world" to provide rocket-powered, point-to-point 3,000 mph air travel.
