Virgo Galactic
It has now been 12 months since Sir Richard Branson briefly left this world, then made a feathered return to Earth and landed on a hot, dusty airstrip in rural New Mexico.
The flight marked a triumphant moment for Branson, who fulfilled a childhood dream of going to space just a week before turning 71. In doing so, Branson beat fellow space-obsessed billionaire Jeff Bezos to the hilt. The effusiveness about his flight — and what it promised to Virgin Galactic — helped push his company’s stock above $50 a share.
When Richard Branson went into space, he and his company appeared to be on top of the world.
But it’s been a tough ride since then. The most important is that of Virgin Galactic VSS unit spaceship has to fly one more time, and that may not happen until this winter. In the meantime, Bezos’ space tourism company Blue Origin has begun regularly flying paying customers into space, higher than Virgin Galactic, on a fully reusable spacecraft. Partly as a result, Virgin Galactic’s stock price crashed and now trades at about $7 a share.
So a year after its historic flight, it’s worth asking the question: is Virgin Galactic still a player in the space tourism race? And if not, what does that mean for space tourism in the coming years?
looking back
Some of the shine from Branson’s July 11, 2021 flight is gone. A few weeks after the space flight, it was revealed that VSS unit flew outside its designated airspace for 1 minute 41 seconds after being released from its carrier aircraft. This prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to ground the spacecraft before concluding in late September that the company needed better procedures and more closely communicating with the FAA during flight operations.
Ultimately, this grounding had little effect because: VSS unit just wasn’t ready to fly. Virgin Galactic originally planned to fly its next mission late last summer or early fall, which would transport officers from the Italian Air Force to space. But in September, the company said the flight would not take place before mid-October due to a problem with the supplier.
“While preparing for the Unity 23 test flight, a third-party supplier recently identified a possible manufacturing defect in a component of the flight control system they supply to Virgin Galactic,” the company said in a statement. “At this point, it is not yet known whether the defect is present in the company’s vehicles and what repair work, if any, will be required.”
In mid-October, when this flight was scheduled to take place, Virgin Galactic announced another reason for the delays. In fact, the company said, it now plans to start an “improvement program” for both the VSS unit spaceship and its carrier plane, VMS Eve† In its public statements, Virgin Galactic was fairly vague about the work needed, but its comments about materials and flight margins were somewhat alarming.
This work is progressing more or less for almost a year without another substantial update. The next flight, carrying Italian Air Force officials, is now scheduled for no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2022, with commercial service – that is, starting to fly the hundreds of people who bought tickets – delayed until at least the first quarter of 2023.
“They’ve always promised too much and failed to deliver on their flight schedule, so I never expected their promised flight cadence,” said Laura Forczyk, a space industry analyst. But the long delay between Branson’s flight and a follow-up mission is raising red flags, she said.
“Going a whole year without even setting a date for their next flight is not a good sign,” she said. “It leads me to the conclusion that there were really serious structural or operational problems with Virgin Galactic’s recent flights, despite their denial.”
