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Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) is a company founded by Paul Allen and Burt Rutan to handle the commercial spinoffs from the Tier One project. It owns the intellectual property arising from Tier One, and it is in turn owned by Paul Allen (the majority shareholder) and Burt Rutan. It has signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to develop the Virgin SpaceShip, a suborbital spacecraft, for space tourism. Virgin Group and Scaled have subsequently formed a joint venture, The Spaceship Company to manufacture the spacecraft.
[edit] Company
The structure of Mojave Aerospace Ventures appears to be the basis of the deal between Allen and Rutan for the funding of Tier One. The company owns all the intellectual property of the Tier One project, such as patents, and so controls commercial exploitation. Allen, the sole source of funding for Tier One, is the majority owner. Rutan, having developed the technology, owns a minority stake. This stands in contrast to the company more usually associated with Tier One, Scaled Composites, which is owned by Burt Rutan. MAV serves to separate Tier One spinoffs from Scaled Composites.
When the Tier One program was announced, Scaled Composites initially expressed a hope that by about 2013 it would be possible for members of the public to experience a suborbital flight for about the price of a luxury cruise.
[edit] Virgin Galactic
On September 25, 2004 MAV agreed on a joint venture with Richard Branson's newly-formed company Virgin Galactic, to develop a suborbital spacecraft for the space tourism market. The initial plan is to build five Virgin SpaceShips, based on scaling up the SpaceShipOne design. These could start revenue flights in 2007-2008, with tickets initially costing around US$190,000 each, including three days of flight training. It is anticipated that the price would drop substantially as more companies break into the space tourism market 10-15 years down the road. This deal could see the company profit by up to US$21million in the next few years, depending on how many spacecraft Virgin Galactic decides to build. The spacecraft would be manufactured by The Spaceship Company.
The designs for the Tier 1b customer suborbital spaceflight vehicles are referred to as SpaceShipTwo and its first stage White Knight Two.
[edit] External links
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