'Shocked' Branson vows to persevere with space tourism dream post test-flight crash

Expressing shock at the news of the unfortunate crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, Virgin chief Sir Richard Branson has promised to continue with the dream of space flight for people.

News.com.au reports that post the crash, Branson issued a statement saying that it was known that the road to space was extremely difficult, adding that every new transportation system had to deal with bad days early in their history.

He said that "space is hard - but worth it" and vowed to persevere with the space tourism idea despite the crash.

Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, who has excelled at marketing the dream of space travel for ordinary people, was very close to achieving it, with the first passengers scheduled for 2015, ITV News reported.

However, now investigators are trying to find the cause of the crash that killed one pilot and seriously injured another, though it is clear that soon after the spacecraft was released from its mothership and fired its rocket something went catastrophically wrong.

The immediate focus will be on the fuel mix because engineers have been experimenting with this in order to maximize the performance of the engines.

But now it is all in jeopardy, as and as potential passengers are left to ponder whether rocketry and space travel are simply inherently too risky for recreational flying.