Richard Branson's company is a few days away from its second commercial flight, although it's anticipating minimal revenue from these suborbital trips.
Virgin Galactic's first commercial spaceflight, a four-passenger mission, is scheduled to launch on Thursday (June 29). How many people can the company's SpaceShipTwo really carry?
A twin-fuselage jet stood ready on Thursday to carry a Virgin Galactic rocket plane with a three-man crew from Italy into the New Mexico sky for a high-altitude launch of the company's first flight of paying customers to the edge of space. The two Italian air force colonels and an aerospace engineer from the National Research Council of Italy were due to join their Virgin Galactic instructor and the spaceplane's two pilots on a suborbital ride expected to take the six men about 50 miles (80 km) above the desert floor. The flight marks a decisive moment for Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, the space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, as it inaugurates commercial service following several years fraught with development setbacks.