INSIDE STORY

Branson’s battle to revive space odyssey

Sir Richard Branson ‘seriously questioned’ his Virgin Galactic project after a fatal testing crash but his new craft is almost ready to fly
Sir Richard Branson ‘seriously questioned’ his Virgin Galactic project after a fatal testing crash but his new craft is almost ready to fly
VIRGIN GALACTIC/PA

Mike Moses calls it the “Oh shit door”. Walk through the entrance to Virgin Galactic’s hangar in the Mojave desert in southern California and it is clear why. Parked in the heart of the bustling, cavernous facility is a shiny spaceship.

VSS Unity, a rocket with wings, is certainly an expletive- inspiring machine. Yet on a searing desert morning last month, the craft had its windows covered in protective paper and wires running to a battery of machines pored over by furrow-browed technicians, like a patient on an operating table.

Moses, head of operations at Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, calls this a very good sign. “We’re very close to being ready to fly,” he said through a wide grin. “We are