Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson admits future of space tourism may have 'ended' with crash

Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, a British commercial spaceflight company, has reportedly admitted that his dream of commercial space tourism may have ended in the explosion that consumed spacecraft SpaceShipTwo in California's Mojave Desert two days ago.

After rushing to the crash site, the Virgin Chief said that he would like to find out "what went wrong" and rectify it in order to make certain that the "dream lives on." However, he also added that he will not push the goal "blindly," reported The Guardian.

Hundreds of people had already reserved seats and paid a deposit of 2,50,000 dollars for a minutes-long sub-orbital flight on SpaceShipTwo. The spacecraft can carry six passengers.

The journey was the 35th test flight of the company that wants to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.

While one of the two pilots was killed in the crash, the other is receiving medical care for his injuries.

Virgin had hoped to launch commercially in 2015 and had already taken about 700 flight bookings at 250,000 dollars each.