Virgin Galactic hopes to have second rocket plane finished by the end of 2014

Virgin Galactic hopes to have second rocket plane finished by the end of 2014
(Image credit: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.