"Most of the changes that we made were planned before the accident," said Will Pomerantz, Vice President of Special Projects at Virgin Galactic. "With regard to the accident specifically, we have made one structural change to the vehicle, which is to add a mechanical inhibit to the featherlock system that would prevent that from ever being inadvertently opened at the wrong time in flight."
Ladies and gentlemen, please meet the new #SpaceShipTwo. More photos and info coming soon. pic.twitter.com/cNCTDj3cHv
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) February 19, 2016
Virgin's press secretary said Thursday that the company wasn't trying to go into "a race" to build a commercial-friendly spaceship, and that it's "committed to being thorough in our testing."
"We're trying to democratize access to space," said Pomerantz. "The total number of human beings who have ever been to space as of today is 552."
Company chairman Branson claims that Virgin Galactic has already sold its first 800 tickets, at $250,000 each, without specifying a launch date.
Virgin Galactic is joined in offering space tourism by other companies, including Elon Musk's SpaceX project, and Blue Origin, brainchild of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
