Sir Richard Branson vowed to continue his space tourism venture despite his $350m space plane crash

The founder of the Virgin Group, Mr Branson, and a long-time advocate of commercial space travel, said he was "shocked and saddened" but would "persevere".

Despite the SpaceShipTwo explosion in California's Mojave Desert on Friday while testing it in the air leaving One pilot died and the other was badly injured

Branson still hopes Virgin to launch commercially in 2015. 

In fact there is already more than 700 .flight bookings at $250,000 (£156,000) each, with Mr Branson pledging to travel on the first flight.

However, he condoned with the families who were affected in the tragedy "All our thoughts are with the families of everyone affected by this tragic event," he wrote.

"Space is hard - but worth it. We will persevere and move forward together," he added.

"The future rests in many ways on hard days like this, but we believe we owe it to the team to understand this and to move forward. And that is what we'll do."

I thought I just read 700 flight already booked to venture into space despite the crash. I guess people like to dare. Wish is good because innovation of today emerged from the fears and risk of yesterdays.

Would you still want to fly space?

Credit: bbc news