SpaceShip III (SS3, also with Roman numeral: SSIII; formerly SpaceShipThree) was an upcoming class of spaceplanes by Virgin Galactic to follow SpaceShipTwo.
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.
[3][4] 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).
[12] The SpaceShip III vehicle concept was revised to provide just a few minutes of weightlessness and views for space tourists for Virgin Galactic, and was meant to be a production version of SpaceShipTwo,[13] with improved maintenance and flight rate performance.
[1] The first Spaceship III, VSS Imagine suborbital spaceplane for Virgin Galactic, was announced on 25 February 2021 and was rolled out on 30 March 2021.