It's probably a technology dead-end of sorts: it is unlikely to scale, either in the sense of becoming a common mode of transport, or in becoming a more fully-f

It's probably a technology dead-end of sorts: it is unlikely to scale, either in the sense of becoming a common mode of transport, or in becoming a more fully-fledged spacecraft. Personally I think it's a beautiful system and an engineering marvel in its own right, but like a lot of super-specialised machines it's hard to say whether they affect humanity's knowledge in a wider way. It's a tourism experience, see the earth from space and try weightlessness around the quarter-million dollar mark. You could do whatever science a few minutes of weightlessness provides; astronaut training too It is worth noting that Virgin also operate a separate commercial smallsat launcher company, Virgin Orbital, which uses air-launched rockets, so maybe Virgin Galactic experience helped with that.