“The funny thing about races is people always say, ‘We’re not in a race’ until they actually win,” Branson said. “We can drink a couple of glasses of champagne to that tonight.”
The company also plans to restart marketing of the rides, which had been halted in the aftermath of the 2014 crash that killed a test pilot. Branson envisions a fleet of Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo craft like the VSS Unity operating so frequently that costs fall to the point where space travel is widely affordable.
“It is a very very exciting time I think for investors investing in commercial space ship companies to do so,” Branson said. “The market we believe is enormous. Something like 80 people of people we research, if they could afford it and if they get offered a return ticket, would love to go to space and it’s up to us to do both.”
The flight was also Virgin Galactic’s first time to generate revenue, ferrying four research payloads as part of a program co-sponsored by NASA.
After the flight, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would award Unity’s test pilots, Mark “Forger” Stucky and Frederick “CJ” Sturckow, with commercial astronaut wings. Sturckow, a former space shuttle pilot, will become the only person to be awarded astronaut wings from both NASA and the FAA.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.