The CEO of Virgin Galactic was in Albuquerque yesterday to assure business leaders the company is still on track for commercial space flight from Spaceport America, according to a report in the Albuquerque Journal.
Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, at a luncheon hosted by the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, said his company is far along in the process of building a second spaceship after an explosion and crash destroyed the first one in the Mojave Desert last year.
The new ship is just a few months from completion, Whitesides said, at which point it will be ready for a round of test flights in preparation for commercial flights from Spaceport America.
“The last few months have been a challenging time for the company, but we feel like we’re really moving past that now,” Whitesides said. “We’re working towards internal schedules that we prefer not to release to not put pressure on our engineers. But we’re getting closer.”
Christine Anderson, Spaceport America’s executive director, also spoke at the event and said the spaceport has signed two new tenants: satellite communications firm X2nSat and the drone and rocket launch systems firm ARCA Aerospace Corp. They join Virgin and two other companies, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Colorado-based UP Aerospace.