In the long running saga of Virgin Galactic’s planned commercial suborbital launch service, Sir Richard Branson has publically admitted on the David Letterman television show that the first commercial flight of his Virgin Galactic’s suborbital launch vehicle operation will now be delayed yet again, this time from the end of 2014 to early 2015. The programme has had several setbacks and delays, most recently in having to redesign the air-launched SpaceShipTwo vehicle’s hybrid rocket engine, changing its fuel from rubber to a polymer based plastic. The reason was that the previous engine had not given enough performance to breach the 100km barrier – the traditionally accepted limit where “spaceflight” begins. Sir Richard Branson is on record as previously predicted that the first commercial launch would take place in 2010.
