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    21 year ago

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    The sun has started to creep over the craggy San Andreas Mountains, illuminating the massive, alien spaceship-like building here in New Mexico that Virgin Galactic calls home.

    Founded by Sir Richard Branson some 19 years ago, the company has had a wild ride in its quest to become the world’s first bona fide space tourism business.

    Most of the previous missions were test flights to push the envelope of the VSS Unity spacecraft’s capabilities.

    More than 1,000 people have bought tickets for the Virgin Galactic experience, which includes a few minutes of weightlessness after a one-minute rocket ride to the top of the world.

    The first several hundred paid $250,000 for their tickets more than 15 years ago, with the expectation of starting flights around 2010.

    So with this single mission, Virgin Galactic really did, at long last, start to fulfill its goals of broadening access to space.