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A space tourism rocket broke apart in flight over California's Mojave Desert after a device to slow the experimental spaceship's descent deployed too soon.

The Tony Blair grin was gone but Richard Branson was unbowed by disaster when he appeared on American breakfast television on Monday morning.

He vowed his program to hurl paying customers into the sky to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness at the very edge of space would go ahead despite the disaster that killed test pilot Michael Alsbury high above the MojaveDesert. He owed it to the pilot, he said.

We will continue: Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has saluted the bravery of test pilots but has also made comments that suggest the crash was the pilots' fault. Photo: AFP

"We owe it to him to continue and that we will do," he told the Today Show host, Matt Lauer.

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Lauer himself homed in on a question many have discussed since the accident. Test flight and space travel has always been dangerous, are the risks worth it when the object is an expensive thrill ride rather than the advancement of science?

"Absolutely it is worth the risks," said Branson without hesitation, adding though that his program was about more than the $200,000 space flight that is being marketed to rich adventurers.

Mid-air breakup: Sheriff's deputies look at a piece of debris near the crash site of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo near Cantil, California. Photo: Reuters

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Richard Branson: We owe it to test pilot to continue Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo