Good for them, but man it's been a long time. SS1 won the X-Prize almost exactly 9 years ago, and apparently took about 3 years to get there. I know a revenue version is going to have more details to attend to, but that's still a long time for approximately the same system.<p>My understanding from the "industry" is that most of the delay was in scaling the hybrid engine up. Which I can imagine, as it's the largest operational hybrid ever made--though a smallish motor as far as conventional liquid or solid rocketry goes.<p>I wonder if they regret pioneering in this particular area. If it works eventually (and looks like they finally got it going) it may work out okay, but they'd probably have been flying years ago with a liquid system. As is they may just barely beat XCOR (which has next to no money in comparison) into revenue flight.<p>Personally I don't doubt that the hybrid approach was a poor idea (if for no other reason than casting and reloading giant rubber grains seems cumbersome in comparison to re-filling with kerosene), but we'll soon have a hybrid rocketplane (SS2) and a liquid rocketplane (Lynx) flying side-by-side, so I guess we'll see. Though Virgin's money and press may tilt the playing field.
I am looking forward to this being available. I consider it one of the bell weathers of the private space flight 'business.' A healthy source of revenue for private access to space will change the market dynamics on what gets built, a small niche revenue will not. Either way, we get a data point.
<i>"designed to carry up to six passengers on what will be suborbital flights at first."</i><p>Unless I am mistaken, I don't think there are plans on ever getting SpaceShipTwo orbital; Mach 1.43 is an order of magnitude away from what you need for LEO. I am guessing they mean that in the future Virgin Galactic will orbit something else.
Current space-hops just can't be anything more than a tourist attraction. Looking at the design it seems the ship is unable to do atmospheric entry from orbit and is a dead end as far as research is concerned.