Branson: SpaceShipTwo Test Program “Very Close to Being Finished”

Posted
by
Doug Messier
on April 17, 2012, at 11:01 am
in News
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Comments: 4 responses
4 Comments

Richard Branson speaks about space tourism, sending Stephen Colbert on a one-way trip to space, and the status of SpaceShipTwo’s test flight program.

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  • mr. mark

    Time will tell. Engine test results have become very proprietary for Virgin Galactic. We’ll know if thing are on track with the first flight engine test. We already know things are delayed. Otherwise, It’s more hype from the hype master.

  • Doubting Tom

    If “very close” means “sometime in the future” and “finished” means “Engine! We don’t need no stinking engine!” then this statement is accurate. Or as Obi-wan once said true from a certain point of view.

  • ken

    Close to being finished????? With only drop tests with no engine for SS2? Doesn’t Branson mean: “close to being started?”

  • Bob sees it through

    That slight omission in the september flight with SpaceShipTwo scared the living daylights out of the Scaled Composites guys. Since then no drop tests. The design seems to be a total fail. White Knight on the other hand is all thumbs up (explainable, no groundbreaking technic here). So what do you do? You focus on White Knight and downplay any concern about airworthiness of SpaceShipTwo. It just takes more time. In plain English: we delay and delay still further as we already have done. 2010 became 2011 and 2011 became 2012 and 2012 becomes – lets be blunt- 2014 or 2015… maybe. Branson grins. Bad choise made.