Virgin Galactic announced Wednesday that Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences will help design and build its next-generation motherships.
The mothership is a dual-fuselage aircraft carrier that takes off and carries the Virgin Galactic spaceship to its release altitude of around 50,000 feet, where the spaceship then launches from atop the mothership into space.
The current generation of mothership is called the VMS Eve, which stands for Virgin Mothership Eve, and was built by American aerospace company Scaled Composites.
“Our next generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier. “They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain, and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year.”…