SpaceShip III (SS3, also with Roman numeral: SSIII; formerly SpaceShipThree) was a planned class of

spaceplane A spaceplane is a vehicle that can flight, fly and gliding flight, glide as an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and function as a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbit ...

s by

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and opera ...

to follow

SpaceShipTwo The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) was an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic. SpaceShipTwo was ...

. It was first teased on the Virgin Galactic

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

account on 25 February 2021 announcing the rollout of the first SpaceShip III plane on 30 March 2021. By June 2024, development of the two SpaceShip III vehicles, VSS ''Imagine'' and VSS ''Inspire'' was canceled, with the intention of using the vehicles for ground testing and development for the successor ''Delta''-class spacecraft. Ultimately, no example of a SpaceShip III vehicle was ever completed or flown in any way (i.e. no captive carry flight, no glide flight, no powered flight nor any other type of flight).

Concept evolution

The purpose originally proposed for SpaceShipThree in 2005 was for commercial

orbital spaceflight An orbital spaceflight (or orbital flight) is a spaceflight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. To do this around the Earth, it must be on a free trajectory which has an altit ...

, as part of a program called "Tier 2" by

Burt Rutan Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan (; born June 17, 1943) is a retired American aerospace engineer and entrepreneur noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, and energy-efficient air and space craft. He designed the recor ...

founder of

Scaled Composites Scaled Composites (often called simply Scaled) is an American aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan and currently owned by Northrop Grumman. It is located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, United States. Founded to d ...

. By 2008, Scaled Composites had reduced those plans and articulated a conceptual design wherein the SpaceShipThree vehicles were to be used for transportation through point-to-point suborbital spaceflight traveling outside the

atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...

with the spacecrafts providing, for example, a two-hour trip on the Kangaroo Route (from

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).SpaceShipThree revealed?
FlightGlobal Hyperbola, Rob Coppinger, 29 Feb 2008 Scaled was sold to

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

in 2007, and references to further work on a conceptual Scaled SS3 ended at some point afterwards from Scaled. Scaled was realigned by Northrop Grumman in 2015 as a research unit. Virgin Galactic acquired full control of

The Spaceship Company The Spaceship Company (TSC) is a British/American spacecraft manufacturing company that was founded by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson in mid-2005 and was jointly owned by Virgin Group (70%) and Scaled Composites (30%) until 2012 when Virgin ...

in 2012, the manufacturer of SS2. The technology was built upon the base technology owned by Mojave Aerospace Ventures of

Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, computer programmer, and investor. He co-founded Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the ...

, originally licensed in 2004. As Allen died in 2018, subsequent space activities of the Vulcan Group went inactive. By 2016,

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate who co-founded the Virgin Group in 1970, and controlled 5 companies remaining of once more than 400. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneu ...

was still planning to have a point-to-point sub-orbital spaceliner follow-up to SpaceShipTwo, for

and

Revised concept

The SpaceShip III vehicle concept was revised to provide just a few minutes of weightlessness and views for space tourists for Virgin Galactic, and was meant to be a production version of

, with improved maintenance and flight rate performance. It did not have point to point transportation capabilities as previously envisioned in 2016. In early 2021, Virgin Galactic teased an upcoming vehicle on their Twitter account with the name shown in stylized font as "SPACESHIP 3".

Development

The first Spaceship III, VSS ''Imagine'' suborbital spaceplane for

, was announced on 25 February 2021 and was rolled out on 30 March 2021. On that occasion, it was indicated there was ground testing to be done before glide test flights could commence, no earlier than the summer of 2021. ''Imagine'' was one of two SpaceShip III class spacecraft on order by Virgin Galactic, the second being VSS ''Inspire''.

List of vehicles

References

External links