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No failure has been quite so dramatically visible as Friday’s crash of the rocket.

By Monday Sir Richard had returned to his home, which he calls the Great House, on the enclave called Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, which he has stocked with flamingoes, rock iguanas, giant tortoises and endangered Madagascan lemurs, to work full-time on damage control.

“This was a horrible setback, particularly for the family” of the dead pilot, but “the risk is worth it,” he told British television. He added that there would be a “whole massive series of test flights” before he would take any customers into space.

“We need to be absolutely certain our spaceship has been thoroughly tested — and that it will be — and once it’s thoroughly tested, and we can go to space — we will go to space,” Sir Richard said. “We must push on. There are incredible things that can happen through mankind being able to explore space properly,” he said.

He harshly criticized news media for reporting that the rocket had exploded. Investigators now believe that a device that rotates the tail to create drag during descent deployed too soon. And Sir Richard insisted that, once testing is complete, he and his family will be the first to fly into space — before taking up any paying passengers. Flights are to depart from Spaceport America, a $209-million, taxpayer-funded hangar in southern New Mexico. Even before Friday’s accident, a series of challenges had delayed the project about five years. Still, prospective travellers’ deposits have already raised $80-million.

Even as his firm’s galactic arm struggles to regroup, Sir Richard continues ahead with other ventures, including spending US$1.7-billion to build two ships for a new venture, Virgin Cruises. Recently he made headlines when he came out in favour of letting employees decide when and where they work. It seems unlikely that the explosion will succeed in slowing down the tenacious 64-year-old entrepreneur, whose maternal grandmother, after all, passed advanced Latin American ballroom dancing at age 89.

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