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."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.