The Spaceship Company

The Spaceship Company, known as TSC, is a British and American spacecraft manufacturer founded in mid-2005 by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson. It was owned 70 percent by Virgin Group and 30 percent by Scaled Composites until Virgin Galactic bought the remaining stake and became sole owner in 2012. TSC was formed to own the technology Scaled Composites created for the Virgin SpaceShip programme, including the care-free reentry system and the cantilevered hybrid rocket motor, and it manufactures the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft for Virgin Galactic, including VSS Unity. In 2010 it broke ground on a 68,000 square foot assembly plant at Mojave Air and Space Port in California, completed in 2011 for 8 million dollars, and its workforce grew from 70 people in 2011 to 430 by July 2018. It also worked with Boom Technology on the XB-1 supersonic demonstrator.