SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, who is beginning work on Virgin's space fleet, has promised to ride along with Branson on the first flight.

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Virgin, with a young, efficient fleet of airliners, does well in most of them.

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Similar commercial spaceports have been set up in New Mexico, where Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans to fly a fleet of suborbital passenger spaceships, as well as Alaska, Virginia and California.

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