Dawn of the Age of Space Tourism

Virgin Galactic—the California-based spaceflight subsidiary of archetypal billionaire cool guy Richard Branson’s Virgin Group—has announced the signing of a long-term lease for a new final-assembly manufacturing facility for its next-generation Delta class spaceships.

The new structure—already under construction and slated to be fully-operational by late 2023—will be located in Mesa, Arizona, adjacent the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. When complete, the facility will have a yearly production capacity of six spacecraft—an ambitious objective that will bring hundreds of high-paying, aerospace engineering and manufacturing jobs to the Phoenix/Mesa area.

The Delta class spaceship will serve as Virgin Galactic’ workhorse vehicle, flying weekly missions in support of the company’s target of four-hundred flights per year from its Spaceport America facility near Las Cruces, New Mexico. The first Delta class ships are expected to commence revenue-generating payload flights in late 2025 before progressing to passenger-carrying space tourism flights in 2026.

Virgin Galactic is currently vetting and selecting suppliers to build the Delta class spaceships’ major subassemblies, which will be delivered to the new Mesa facility for final assembly. Completed Delta class ships will be ferried by Virgin Galactic motherships to Spaceport America for flight-testing and subsequent commercial operation.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier states: “Our spaceship final assembly factory is key to accelerating the production of our Delta fleet, enabling a rapid increase in flight capacity that will drive our revenue growth. We’re thrilled to expand into the greater Phoenix area which is home to outstanding aerospace talent – and we look forward to growing our team and fleet at our new facility.”

In addition to green-lighting manufacturing infrastructure for its Delta-class fleet, Virgin Galactic has reached an agreement with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Sciences to build two of its next-generation motherships, each of which will be capable of flying up to two-hundred launches per year. The aircraft will be built at Aurora's facilities in Columbus, Mississippi and Bridgeport, West Virginia, with final assembly taking place at Virgin Galactic's Mojave, California, facility. The first new mothership—in concomitance with the Delta-class spaceplanes it will support—is expected to enter service in 2025.

Passenger flights aboard Virgin Galactic’s Delta class sell for an eye-watering $450,000 per seat. Customers are required to make an initial deposit of $150,000 to hold their spot—about $25,000 of which is nonrefundable.

Four-hundred flights per year is believed to be the cadence into which Virgin Galactic must settle if the company is to reach profitability. The goal seems lofty insomuch as Virgin’s VSS Unity (formerly VSS Voyager) has not flown since July 2021 and will not return to service until at least the fourth quarter of 2022. Branson, however, is a crafty entrepreneur with an excellent understanding of imagination’s role in industry, and an uncanny knack for plucking profit from improbability.

 FMI: www.virgingalactic.com