George Thomas Whitesides is an American businessman and public official. He was CSO and long time CEO of Virgin Galactic, a firm developing commercial space vehicles at the Mojave Air and Space Port. He still serves as a member of the Virgin Galactic Advisory Board. Whitesides was previously Chief of Staff of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Administrator Charles Bolden, a position to which he was named after serving on the NASA transition team for the incoming Obama administration. On February 22, 2023, he announced his candidacy for California's 27th congressional district in the 2024 election.

Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company develops commercial spacecraft and provides suborbital spaceflights to space tourists. Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic's maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS Unity spaceship. Branson had originally hoped to see a maiden spaceflight by 2010, but the date was delayed for several years, and then delayed again, primarily due to the October 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise.