We had an electrical fault about 500 miles into the trip and lost more than half our fuel. We had a fire on the roof. And missed Los Angeles by 3,500 miles at the end of the trip and ending up in the arctic in a snowstorm.
Richard BransonI've used the Phoenix Centrifuge to replicate what the body's going to go through on the flight up. I've also done some gravity tests with ZERO-G [a charter-flight service in Arlington, Va., that uses modified Boeing 727s to simulate weightlessness], which went great.
Richard BransonWhat we are trying to do at Virgin is not to have one enormous company in one sector under one banner, but to have two hundred or even three hundred separate companies. Each company can stand on its own feet and, in that way, although we've got a brand that links them, if we were to have another tragedy such as that of 11 September - which hurt the airline industry - it would not bring the whole group crashing down.
Richard Branson