But to do so, Virgin Galactic needs to give up on the horse that got them here.<\/p>\n
On 11 missions, including test flights, the VSS Unity<\/em> rocket plane has soared higher than 50 miles (80 kilometers)\u2014where space begins, according to the US government\u2019s definition\u2014but it will probably fly just once more. Virgin Galactic is redirecting resources toward completing the development and testing of a new fleet of rocket planes known as Delta-class ships, which the company says will outclass VSS Unity<\/em> in flight cadence, reusability, and revenue-earning potential.<\/p>\n Colglazier said the first of Virgin Galactic\u2019s Delta ships is on track to begin ground and flight testing next year, with commercial service targeted for 2026 based out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n Late last year, Virgin Galactic announced it would retire VSS Unity <\/em>by the middle of 2024, following the company\u2019s Galactic 07 or Galactic 08 missions. On Tuesday, a company spokesperson confirmed to Ars that Virgin Galactic will pause flights of VSS Unity <\/em>after the Galactic 07 mission slated for this spring. That means the rocket plane will fly to space just one more time, taking four customers into suborbital space to experience a few minutes of microgravity before coming back to land on a runway.<\/p>\n Colglazier said this next flight will have a \u201cblended manifest of researchers and private citizens.\u201d The company hasn\u2019t identified any of the passengers, and for the last several flights, hasn\u2019t announced the names of its passengers until after they landed.<\/p>\n Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic\u2019s president of spaceline operations, said the Galactic 07 mission, the final flight of VSS Unity<\/em>, is scheduled for the second quarter of this year, sometime between the beginning of April and the end of June. He said engineers are looking at a \u201cminor change\u201d to a retention mechanism that malfunctioned on the Galactic 06 flight last month, causing an alignment pin to fall to the ground as the rocket plane separated from its carrier aircraft over New Mexico.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic reported the anomaly earlier this month, but Moses said the alignment pin performed its function of keeping the VSS Unity <\/em>spacecraft properly aligned to its carrier jet through pre-flight procedures until the rocket plane separated from the aircraft to fire its rocket motor and climb to the edge of space. The anomaly \u201cposed no safety threat at all during the flight,\u201d he said, but \u201cclearly we don\u2019t want it to fall.\u201d<\/p>\n The reason for pulling VSS Unity<\/em> off flight status boils down to money, not any technical limitation. In August, Moses told Ars that VSS Unity<\/em> could be capable of 500 to 1,000 flights.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n Sir Richard Branson speaks after he flew into space aboard a Virgin Galactic rocket plane in 2021.<\/p>\n Credit: This week, Virgin Galactic reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2023. The company ended December with $982 million in cash or cash equivalents on hand, significantly more than other companies that went public during the so-called \u201cSPAC craze\u201d in the last few years. The company says this is enough funding to survive until the new Delta-class ships enter commercial service in 2026.<\/p>\n But Virgin Galactic continues to report low revenues, with $7 million in revenue recorded in all of last year. After taking into account operating expenses, the company reported a net loss of $502 million last year, almost the exact same financial loss it recorded in 2022. Since going public in 2019, Virgin Galactic\u2019s market valuation has fallen from more than $2 billion to around $700 million today.<\/p>\n So, there\u2019s a steep climb for Virgin Galactic to become profitable. Branson, Virgin Galactic\u2019s founder, told the Financial Times in December that he was not planning any further investments in the suborbital spaceflight company. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the deepest pockets after COVID, and Virgin Galactic has got $1 billion, or nearly,\u201d Branson said. \u201cIt should, I believe, have sufficient funds to do its job on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n Branson holds a 7.7 percent stake in Virgin Galactic through his Virgin Group business empire. Virgin Orbit, another startup Branson established to go after the small satellite launch market, went bankrupt last year.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic is a long way from facing the same fate as Virgin Orbit, but VSS Unity<\/em> was never going to turn the company into a moneymaker.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic officials this week offered new details about the Delta-class ships it will build at a new factory near Phoenix. The Delta ships will look almost identical to VSS Unity<\/em>, but they will accommodate six paying passengers, compared to the four customer seats on each VSS Unity <\/em>flight. Two Virgin Galactic pilots will command the Delta ship on each flight, and the company will continue to use the same air-launch architecture.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n \u201cThe dynamics of the flight, the shape of the vehicle, our pilot-led approach, and our fundamental customer experience won\u2019t change, but each of the aspects will be enhanced,\u201d Moses said. \u201cThe spaceship system emphasizes safety first, and then ultimately, reusability and frequent flight rate.\u201d<\/p>\n The Delta ships will be built using a composite resin material called bismaleimide, or BMI, that can withstand higher temperatures than the materials used on VSS Unity.<\/em> Moses said this material change will allow Delta ships to fly with a lighter heat shield, improving cabin capacity for passengers and research experiments inside the vehicle.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic\u2019s goal is to fly each Delta ship eight times per month, an improvement over the once-per-month flight cadence achieved by VSS Unity. <\/em>Many rocket companies aspire to operate their vehicles like airliners. Virgin Galactic\u2019s strategy to achieve this goal is to build Delta ships like airplanes.<\/p>\n For Delta ships, Moses said Virgin Galactic will eliminate many of the inspections it performs between each Unity <\/em>flight. The company has committed to a substantial upfront investment to build a Delta ship structural test article to validate component life and cycle limits for major components of the vehicle.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will then pull, push, bend, and twist that piece of structure until it breaks, verifying its capabilities compared to computer model predictions,\u201d Moses said. \u201cThis type of testing is common in aerospace manufacturing, and it allows you to have high confidence in your limits and capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n The parts of the Delta ships that still need inspections will be easier for technicians to access in between flights. Ars previously reported on Virgin Galactic\u2019s efforts to reduce turnaround times between spaceflights.<\/p>\n \u201cA static test article represents a significant investment in time and materials, but the payoff is well worth it,\u201d Moses said. \u201cSimilar to how modern airliners are maintained, the Delta fleet will have test data to inform the number and frequency of inspections that will be needed with the ability to space these out over the course of its lifetime. While Unity<\/em> needed an average of 14 days of inspections between flights, the Delta fleet will only need less than a day.\u201d<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n VSS Unity<\/em> burns its rocket motor on July 11, 2021, on a flight carrying Sir Richard Branson and other Virgin Galactic employees to the edge of space.<\/p>\n Credit: Inside the new factory in Arizona, Virgin Galactic will install automated tooling and introduce \u201cdigital twin\u201d modeling technology that should make it easier to manufacture each Delta ship. VSS Unity <\/em>was a \u201chand-built spaceship,\u201d Moses said, while Virgin Galactic will rely on suppliers Bell Textron and Qarbon Aerospace to build \u201csubassemblies\u201d like wings, fuselages, and feathers for the Delta ships. Both suppliers primarily operate in the commercial aviation market, building helicopters and major composite structures for commercial and military aircraft.<\/p>\n These subassemblies will come together at Virgin Galactic\u2019s final assembly plant now under construction near Phoenix. The \u201cincremental\u201d cost per Delta ship is in the range of $50 million to $60 million, according to Moses.<\/p>\n All of these design changes boil down to Virgin Galactic collecting more revenue per flight. \u201cWith six seats, these ships can deliver a revenue per flight of $3.6 million at current pricing levels,\u201d Colglazier said. That\u2019s roughly 12 times the revenue compared to a single Unity <\/em>flight, Moses said.<\/p>\n With a fleet of four to five Delta ships and two carrier aircraft to tow them aloft, Virgin Galactic could reach a cadence of nearly one flight per day, after setting aside time for annual maintenance downtime and potential unforeseen delays, Colglazier said. This would generate more than $1 billion per year in revenue, according to Virgin Galactic\u2019s numbers. The company is even looking at selling tickets for space enthusiasts to come to New Mexico and watch a Virgin Galactic flight in person.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic will need new motherships to support the ambitious flight rate for the Delta ships, and the company hasn\u2019t said much about when it will build those. The existing mothership, VMS Eve, <\/em>could support early Delta flight tests.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic could still reach positive cash flow with just two Delta ships, according to Doug Ahrens, the company\u2019s chief financial officer. But until the Delta ships start flying on a commercial basis, Virgin Galactic\u2019s revenue is likely to dry up. The company has apparently stopped work on an intermediate spaceship, named VSS Imagine<\/em>, that would have bridged the gap between VSS Unity <\/em>and the next-gen Delta ships.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n For now, Virgin Galactic has stopped selling tickets for spaceflights, other than a handful of \u201chouse seats\u201d available for referrals from other customers or founders. Colglazier said those seats are now sold for $600,000, up from the previous price point of $450,000. The new price for a space tourist seat is in line with what Virgin Galactic charges for a researcher, who comes with additional training and hardware requirements.<\/p>\n The original ticket price for a seat on Virgin Galactic was $200,000. The company says it has a backlog of 725 people waiting for a flight opportunity, but it won\u2019t reopen sales until the Delta ships are closer to becoming operational. When ticket sales resume, Colglazier anticipates prices will likely to continue to go up.<\/p>\n Virgin Galactic had several seats open up on recent flights of VSS Unity<\/em>, and the company sold those last-minute seats at what Colglazier said was a market price. \u201cThat\u2019s been very close to $1 million,\u201d he said, and is in line with the price for a seat on Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard spacecraft, Virgin Galactic\u2019s only competitor in the suborbital human spaceflight market.<\/p>\n So, what\u2019s the market for what Virgin Galactic is offering? The company estimates there are 300,000 people with the desire and money to fly to the edge of space with Virgin Galactic, and the number is growing at an annual rate of 8 percent. If this is true, Virgin Galactic might expand its operations to other spaceports in the United States or abroad.<\/p>\n But first, the company has to show it can actually build and fly suborbital spaceships like airplanes. This is a tall order, but even without Branson\u2019s money, Virgin Galactic appears to have the financial runway to make an earnest attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year, Virgin Galactic seemed to finally be hitting a stride toward making commercial suborbital spaceflight. The company flew its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane to the edge of space six times in six months, giving a few Virgin Galactic customers a taste of spaceflight after waiting more than a decade. Finally, it appeared that Virgin Galactic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,1545,1598,9732,492],"class_list":["post-45406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-spaceport-america","tag-suborbital-space","tag-virgin-galactic"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}One more and done<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-1233924777.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Photo by Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\u201cThis is the new way to make spaceships\u201d<\/h2>\n
![\"Images](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/UNITY-2_6.00_37_55_04.Still001.jpg\")
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\n Virgin Galactic<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n