Virgin Chief Executive Richard Branson is using his fame, and money, to build a space tourism business using spacecraft to be built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites.
This probably depends on whether Mr Allen shows interest in Scaled Composites' business plan for space tourism, which it intends to put together by the end of the year.
One group preparing to sell suborbital flights is Virgin Galactic, whose parent company is partnering with California-based Scaled Composites to develop SpaceShipTwo, the successor to 2004's Ansari X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne.
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But by calculating its operational costs, Scaled Composites will gain a huge insight into the price that will need to be charged for such rides and thus the potential market.
Last month, Mr. Whitesides said in an interview that after the test flights are completed, Virgin Galactic would like to retain "some kind of relationship" with Scaled Composites, but he didn't provide specifics.
Scaled Composites LLC of Mojave, Calif.
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Scaled Composites, founded by renowned aircraft designer Burt Rutan, historically has kept the timing of important test flights under wraps partly to prevent crowds from gathering at the Mojave airport, and partly to avoid putting undue pressure on project managers to launch or take off.
Our first incentivized competition, the Ansari X PRIZE, went to Scaled Composites, which beat out 26 teams from seven countries to become the first to build and launch a private space vessel that could carry three people 100 kilometers into space twice within two weeks.
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We also saw greener transportation take to the skies as Finnair launched the world's longest biofueled commercial flight, Scaled Composites launched its bipod flying car, and the US Air Force announced plans to replace 50 percent of its domestic fuels with biofuels by 2016.
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