From the article: "Virgin Galactic, which was founded by Branson in 2004, last month announced it was cutting jobs and suspending commercial flights for 18 months from next year" I'll believe it when I see it, but I think this is it for Virgin Galactic.
Alan Stern, of New Horizons fame, on why he thinks NASA will continue to book research flights on VG.
Boeing lawsuit accuses Virgin Galactic of stealing trade secrets Forget the shit about Boeing planes being death traps, Burt Rutan was a goddamned aviation legend long before he won the X-Prize. Boeing wants to accuse the company he helped found with stealing IP? Oh, this is gonna get real interesting, real quick. Because you know those little upturned bits at the end of plane wings you often see on big jets? It was Burt Rutan who figured out that those would help save fuel. Dude was the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates/your favorite tech maven of aviation. Doesn't mean he (or his derivative companies) didn't steal from somebody else, just that the odds of the person suing him being in the right are pretty low.
