Virgin Galactic [...] Local authorities have confirmed that one of the two Scaled Composites pilots died during the accident”. This was in strong contrast to public communications previously released concerning the group's successful flights, which had routinely presented pilots, craft, and projects within the same organizational structures, as being "Virgin Galactic" flights or activities of "the Galactic team". The BBC's David Shukman commented that: “Even as details emerge of what went wrong, this is clearly a massive setback to a company hoping to pioneer a new industry of space tourism. Confidence is everything and this will not encourage the long list of
Space Coast Office of Tourism had a strong focus on tourism through the space industry, and the industry accounted for as much as 15% of the tourism in the region, but with a reduction in shuttle launches this dropped to under 5% by 2005. Accordingly, the office had to move their focus to alternative tourism operations, selling "beaches, cruise ships and nature tourism", and after the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster in 2003, the Space Shuttle was dropped from their advertising campaigns. Although the "Discovery's" launch in 2005 did see a return of astronaut imagery, the region's dependency on the space industry was much reduced, and