Virgin Galactic is still moving forward on finishing a second rocket plane by the end of the year, despite the Friday morning crash of SpaceShipTwo in the Mojave Desert, which killed one pilot and seriously injured the other.
"The second spaceship is very advanced in its construction," Virgin Galactic chief executive George Whitesides told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. "We need to work closely with the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board]...to work out as rapidly as we can what happened, and then to move forward. We're hopeful we can make rapid progress."
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The crash killed 39-year-old Michael Alsbury. The pilot who survived, Peter Siebold, 43, has a shoulder injury but is alert and communicating with his family and doctors.
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