Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides has responded to Tom Bower’s new book, “Branson: Behind the Mask.” The author makes a series of claims about the performance and safety of the nitrous oxide-rubber engine that is scheduled to send SpaceShipTwo on a suborbital flight later this year.
Whitesides wrote a letter to The Sunday Times, which began serializing the biography a week ago. The response, published on Feb. 2, is reproduced below:
Dear Sir:
Tom Bower’s claims in extracts from his new book on Richard Branson that Virgin Galactic has “no licence” and “no rocket” to go to space (“Lost in space” and “The sun lizard fading into exile”, News Review, last week) misrepresent the facts and use old information to create a story. Indeed the recent progress of the Galactic programme, including the latest rocket powered flight, renders Bower’s main claims false.
The company’s rocket motor has burned for the full duration and thrust multiple times, and the company released video footage of one such test in December. Bower also fails to note that the team has an experimental permit from the Federal Aviation Administration for the test flight programme phase.
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