The purpose originally proposed for SpaceShipThree in 2005 was for commercial
orbital spaceflight, as part of a program called "Tier 2" by
Burt Rutan founder of
Scaled Composites. By 2008, Scaled Composites had reduced those plans and articulated a conceptual design wherein the SpaceShipThree vehicles were to be used for transportation through
point-to-point suborbital spaceflight traveling outside the
atmosphere with the spacecrafts providing, for example, a two-hour trip on the
Kangaroo Route (from
London to
Sydney or
Melbourne). Scaled was sold to
Northrop Grumman in 2007, and references to further work on a conceptual Scaled SS3 ended at some point afterwards from Scaled. Scaled was realigned by Northrop Grumman in 2015 as a research unit. Virgin Galactic acquired full control of
The Spaceship Company in 2012, the manufacturer of SS2. The technology was built upon the base technology owned by
Mojave Aerospace Ventures of
Paul Allen, originally licensed in 2004. As Allen died in 2018, subsequent space activities of the
Vulcan Group went inactive. By 2016,
Richard Branson was still planning to have a point-to-point sub-orbital spaceliner follow-up to SpaceShipTwo, for
Virgin Galactic and
The Spaceship Company. ==Revised concept==