Billionaire space race (SEDS). Later, Jeff Bezos became a chapter president of SEDS. In the 1990s, Diamandis, dissolute with the state of space development, decided to spur it on and spark the suborbital space tourism market, by initiating a prize, the X Prize. This led to Paul Allen becoming involved in the competition, creating the Scaled Composites Tier One platform of SpaceShipOne and White Knight One which won the Ansari X-Prize in the 2000s. The technology of the winning entrant was then licensed by Richard Branson's Virgin Group as a basis to found Virgin Galactic. The base techniques of Tier One also form
Virgin Australia unchanged after the rollout of premium economy. Virgin Australia began long haul international operations as V Australia, commencing its first passenger flight operations on 27 February 2009. V Australia was re-branded as Virgin Australia's Long Haul International Operations on 7 December 2011. On 10 January 2011, Virgin Blue entered a 10-year strategic alliance with Perth-based Skywest Airlines (now Virgin Australia Regional Airlines), to operate up to 18 new Virgin-branded turboprop aircraft from mid-2011. On 23 February, it was announced that the aircraft would be ATR-72s, to enter service beginning in May 2011; they would allow Virgin Australia to both replace