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Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company ignored repeated safety warnings before Friday's fatal explosion, it was claimed last night.

One leading rocket expert said the entrepreneur's ambitious space project had been playing 'Russian roulette' with the pilots' lives because one of the test flights was sure to end in disaster.

The company's chief executive, George Whitesides, denied claims that one of the project's own engineers had warned as recently as Thursday that the spacecraft was too dangerous to fly – but had been overruled by an executive who said the deadline was too pressing.

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Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stand beside the debris of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo in the Mojave Desert after it exploded and crashed during a test flight over California

Sequence of events: These images show the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo rocket separating from the carrier aircraft, left, prior to it disintegrating in the air, right, during a test flight on Friday

Richard Branson was 'uncomfortable' with explosion claims

Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson rejected that there were specific warnings last week about the planned flight, and said the company takes safety issues very seriously.

"When you have any incidents you get a lot of self-proclaimed experts coming out, a lot of whom know nothing about what they talk about," Sir Richard told BBC TV.

"If any of our rocket engineers warned something wasn't safe to go we wouldn't go. I've spent 30 years running three airlines without incident," he said.

"We take safety very, very carefully. Nobody said anything to worry any of the team about going."

Yesterday US government investigators started combing through the five-mile long wreckage of Virgin's SpaceShipTwo in the Mojave desert in California.

The Virgin Galactic spacecraft had been scheduled to begin passenger flights as early as next spring after eight years of delays caused by technical problems.

But even Sir Richard has had to admit that its fate is now uncertain after the rocket blew up during a test flight, killing one pilot, Michael Alsbury, and seriously injuring another. 

Crash investigators say it may take a year to discover what caused the disaster. 

Crisis: Sir Richard Branson has had to admit the fate of his space tourism venture is now uncertain

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the probe into the crash, said investigators found that the spaceship's 'feathering' system - which lifts and rotates the tail to create drag - was activated before the craft reached the appropriate speed.

The fuel tanks were found intact and had not blown up, they said.

Aerospace experts are already speculating that, whatever the cause, the tragedy may permanently halt the race to take high-paying tourists into space.

Virgin insisted there had been no cancellations from the hundreds of would-be passengers who are ready to pay as much as £150,000 for a 15-minute trip into sub-orbital weightlessness.

But US lawyers said the nascent space tourism industry could now expect far greater scrutiny from aerospace regulators, particularly on the issue of passenger safety.

With the US space agency Nasa having lost 3 per cent of astronauts in fatal accidents, sceptics wonder whether a commercial passenger company could ever operate on such a high level of risk.

Questions about the cause of the crash are already focusing on the fuel propulsion system which was used to blast the rocket after it detached from its carrier plane.

Virgin Galactic has been using a combination of liquid nitrous oxide and plastic fuel. But experts have warned for years about the instability of nitrous oxide, so-called laughing gas, which is also used by dentists.

Carolynne Campbell, a UK-based rocket engineer and lead expert for the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), said that if used in a rocket engine, nitrous oxide can 'go bang in a very unpredictable way'.

She said yesterday that her repeated warnings to various Virgin Galactic chiefs about the dangers of rocket propulsion were ignored. Although the Virgin Galactic website has been describing nitrous oxide as 'benign' and 'stable' as recently as six months ago, experts note that it contributed to the 2007 explosion at the company's spaceport in which three engineers were killed.

Miss Campbell said: 'They knew that three people were killed by this stuff and yet they persisted in presenting it as safe, stable and benign.' She said Sir Richard's company should 'give up' and 'go away and do something they might be good at like selling mobile phones – they should stay out of the space business'.

She added: 'This explosion is not a surprise. It was Russian roulette which flight blew up.' Tommaso Sgobba, executive director of the IAASS and former safety chief at the European Space Agency, said: 'I have been saying for some years now that this was an accident waiting to happen.'

Branon, right, with, from left, Burt Rutan, Mike Alsbury and Mark Forger: Mr Alsbury died in Friday's crash

Wreck: Virgin Galactic has been using a combination of liquid nitrous oxide and plastic fuel. But experts have warned for years about the instability of nitrous oxide, so-called laughing gas, which is also used by dentists

Richard Branson: Determined to find out what went wrong

Geoff Daly, a British rocket scientist, said nitrous oxide was 'very poorly understood in large quantities'. SpaceShipTwo was believed to have carried up to 12,000lb of it.

Some critics have suggested that the space project has seen Sir Richard confusing his two public endeavours, one as a buccaneering adventurer who relishes personal risk and the other as a canny business entrepreneur who makes millions by undercutting rivals in fields such as mobile phones and air travel.

Virgin Galactic chief executive Mr Whitesides has rejected accusations that the company had been taking too many risks. He said the criticism from experts amounted to a difference of professional opinion rather than valid warnings.

He insists they had paid 'a lot of attention to the several hundred engineers that we have on staff' as well as other expert consultants they had consulted.

Sir Richard has promised a full investigation into what went wrong and admitted his company 'fell short'.