Virgin Galactic

In 2004 Branson formed Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company that was working toward offering commercial suborbital passenger flights. In 2006 Branson sold Virgin Mobile, a wireless phone service, though he remained the largest shareholder of the company, which was later renamed Virgin Media, Inc. That same year he…

In that same year Virgin Galactic, a subsidiary of Virgin Atlantic Airways, announced plans to license the SpaceShipOne technology and begin producing commercial spacecraft that would carry paying customers. A confident Rutan predicted that at least 50,000 people would sign up for commercial trips to space in the venture’s…

British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sold hundreds of seats at $300,000 each for its suborbital space tourism flights. Carrying Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight participants into space is SpaceShipTwo, dubbed VSS Unity, which is launched from a permanent spaceport near Upham, New Mexico. Unity made its first fully crewed flight…