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               Branson Vows to Find Out Cause of Spaceship Crash

   by VOA News

   British billionaire Richard Branson said Saturday that he was
   determined to find out what went wrong with his space tourism aircraft
   that crashed, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

   Branson said at a news conference that safety has always been the top
   priority of the program.

   He would not discuss details of Friday's accident, which U.S.
   transportation officials are in the early stages of investigating.

   The Virgin Galactic commercial spaceship, SpaceShipTwo, crashed after
   it was released from a plane during a test flight over the Mojave
   Desert in the western U.S. state of California. Officials said the
   injured pilot ejected from the craft.

   Both crew members were test pilots for Scaled Composites, a Northrop
   Grumman subsidiary involved in the project.

   Scaled Composites said the ill-fated flight was the first using a new
   rocket fuel formula that had been tested successfully on the ground.

   Virgin Galactic, which was founded by Branson, plans to sell trips on
   SpaceShipTwo to the edge of space.  Passengers would have a few minutes
   of weightlessness before returning to Earth.

   The accident was the second suffered by a private U.S. space company in
   recent days. On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial rocket that was
   supposed to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station
   exploded seconds after liftoff from a NASA launch pad in the eastern
   state of Virginia.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/branson-vows-find-cause-spaceship-crash/2504698.html