The Age of Space Tourism Dawns

On 25 May 2023, Virgin Galactic—the California-based spaceflight subsidiary of archetypal billionaire-cool-guy Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group—announced it had successfully completed its Unity 25 space mission.

Mission specialists Jamila Gilbert, Christopher Huie, and Luke Mays—who ventured spaceward for purpose of conducting final end-to-end assessments of Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft and overall spaceflight experience—became the latest in what Virgin Galactic’s management and shareholders hope will prove a lengthy and august roster of civilian space-travelers.

The Company will next prepare for the commencement of its long-awaited commercial spaceline operations, which are slated to get underway with late-June 2023’s Galactic 01 mission.

In 2004, Branson somewhat prematurely declared Virgin Galactic’s first paying passengers would journey spaceward in 2007. Fourteen years thereafter, Virgin Galactic made its 2021 inaugural flight, which unbeknownst to many, drifted dangerously off-course, compelling the mission’s pilots to heroic feats of improvisation by which an embarrassing emergency landing was precluded—just.

In July 2022, Virgin Galactic announced the signing of a long-term lease for a new final-assembly manufacturing facility for its next-generation Delta class spaceships, which are slated to serve as the company’s workhorse vehicle for near-future spaceflight operations. 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.

In the near-term, Virgin Galactic aims to fly its Unity platform—the selfsame vehicle in which Gilbert, Huie, and Mays ascended and safely returned to Earth—once a month, a tempo lagging significantly behind profitability but sufficiently lively, the company’s hopes, to sustain investors and cash-flow until the debut of the Delta class ships, which Virgin Galactic asserts will be capable of undertaking weekly revenue spaceflights.

Provisioned with a fleet of Delta class ships, Branson and his faithful believe the company can maintain a profitable cadence of four-hundred yearly space missions.

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

Notwithstanding Branson’s confidence in his company’s business model, investors have grown increasingly skeptical of Virgin Galactic’s profit-turning potential. In 2021, following Branson’s trip to space aboard the company’s inaugural flight, the publicly-traded company’s stock shot to $55.91 per-share. In 2022, however, after flying no customers to space, the company reported a net loss of $500-million.

On 25 May 2023, Virgin Galactic stock was trading at $4.05 per-share.

FMI: www.virgingalactic.com