The failed flight of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Enterprise was the 54th test flight of the suborbital space plane, although only four of these were rocket powered. The flights began in 2010 and had been scheduled to continue into next year. A total of 140 test flights were planned before commencing commercial operations, which means that had Enterprise not failed, it would have flown another 86 times before being qualified to begin carrying paying passengers. As Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson told talk show host David Letter-man a few weeks before the accident, "From now until March [2015] there will be many test flights. There will be many test flights actually into space." The indication was that there would be an intense period of test flights over the next seven months.
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