Virgin Galactic boss makes first space flight but loses space tourism race

According to foreign media reports, 12 months ago, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson took the company's space plane to realize his dream of space and finally landed safely in New Mexico, the USA On a dusty runway in the countryside. Twelve months ago, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson flew into space on the company's space plane. What is the state of spaceflight at Virgin Galactic today?

This flight was a "highlight moment" for Branson. As he approached his 71st birthday, he realized his childhood dream of space. From this perspective, Branson completely defeated the billionaires who are also obsessed with space travel. Jeff Bezos, millionaire, and head of Blue Origin. Branson's love of spaceflight and his commitment to Virgin Galactic has seen the company's stock soar to as high as $50 a share in 2021.

When Branson went into space, he and Virgin Galactic seemed to be at the top of the world! However, he and the company have had tough times since then, and most crucially, the Virgin Galactic VSS Unity space plane has never flown again, and probably won't fly again until this winter. At the same time, Bezos' Blue Origin company has begun regularly re-using spacecraft to send paying passengers to space, even higher than Virgin Galactic's space tickets, which has contributed in part to the slump in Virgin Galactic's stock price. , which recently traded at around $7 per share.

So, a year after Branson's historic spaceflight, it's worth asking the question - will Virgin Galactic still participate in the space tourism race? If not, what does this mean for space tourism in the years ahead?

Looking back on history

On July 11, 2021, after Branson completed his spaceflight, his halo gradually began to disappear. A few weeks after completing the spaceflight, the relevant media disclosed that the VSS Unity space plane was released by the airborne satellite and was in a designated aviation area. It took 1 minute and 41 seconds to fly. In September of the same year, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concluded that Virgin Galactic needed to further refine its spaceplane operating procedures and maintain closer communication with the FAA during flight operations.

The grounding of the VSS Unity space plane had little impact due to its ill-preparedness for restarting flights. Initially, Virgin Galactic planned to fly again in late summer or early autumn 2021, with the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council (NRC) on board. Three paying passengers, but by September of that year, the company said the VSS Unity space plane would not take off until mid-October due to supplier issues.

Virgin Galactic has issued a statement saying that in preparation for the VSS Unity 23 test flight, a third-party supplier indicated a potential manufacturing defect in a component of its supply flight control drive system. The problem, if any, is it's not clear what repairs are required.

By mid-October 2021, when that spaceflight was on schedule, Virgin Galactic again announced another reason for the delay, in fact, the company said it was now planning to launch a launch of VSS Unity spaceplane and VMS Eve delivery Aircraft "enhancement plan". In the company's public statement, Virgin Galactic was vague about the work required for the "enhancement program", but the analysis of the relevant material costs and flight profits raised concerns that the VSS Unity space plane could fly as planned.

The restart of the VSS Unity flight program has been more or less ongoing for almost a year, but there is still no substantial progress. With Italian Air Force officials in charge of the mission, commercial spaceflight services are currently planned for as early as the fourth quarter of 2022, meaning the service to hundreds of passengers who bought spaceflight tickets will be delayed until at least the first quarter of 2023.

Laura Forczyk, a space industry analyst, said: "Virgin Galactic has always over-promised and never submitted a space flight plan, so I never expected the progress they promised to fly." At the same time, she stressed that the long delay between Branson's flight plan and the successor mission could create red flags.

Laura said that a whole year of uncertainty about the next flight date is not a good sign, which leads me to conclude that there are indeed serious structural or operational problems with Virgin Galactic's recent spaceflights, although they deny it up to this point.

The space race is fierce

In fact, when Branson took off aboard the VSS Unity spaceplane nine days after July 11, 2021, Bezos, the head of Blue Origin, boarded the New Shepard spacecraft built by the company. Bezos was 20 as early as 20 He announced his flight date months ago, hoping to achieve spaceflight on the same day (July 20) that "Apollo 11" astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, which he sees as significant.

Blue Origin has completed five manned space missions using the New Shepard launch system.

At the time, Bezos' statement sparked a debate within Virgin Galactic over whether the flight should be rescheduled, and if it was brought forward, Branson appeared to "beat" Bezos in a sense. , although Virgin Galactic officially denies the claim, it is the truth. Branson, who completed suborbital spaceflight ahead of schedule, "succeeds" in the race, however, it appears to be a costly victory.

Since Bezos completed its maiden flight, Blue Origin has carried out four manned flights through the self-developed First Step capsule, about every two months. The performance of the capsule is close to perfect, and there is no VSS Unity space. Airplane safety hazards and material issues. The company hopes to achieve a flight plan of roughly one crewed mission every two weeks in the next year or two, a goal that doesn't seem out of reach.

"As far as I'm concerned, I think Blue Origin has won the race for suborbital space tourism on July 20, 2021, when the company carried the first paying suborbital space tourist on that space flight," Laura said. This is something Virgin Galactic has yet to achieve."

In addition, Blue Origin has some obvious advantages, mainly financial ones. It is reported that Bezos has invested billions of dollars in the space company, and may currently be as high as $10 billion, although only a small part of it has been used. For the New Shepard spacecraft, these funds can be used for Blue Origin to hire some of the best engineers in the industry and ensure that the project has sufficient personnel and sufficient funds to lay the foundation for the long-term success of the New Shepard spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic's long-term prospects

In contrast, Virgin Galactic does not have such strong financial resources. Branson has sold most of the company's equity before. If there is no stable and continuous space flight order, the company will face substantial losses. According to statistics, from 2020 - 2021, the company lost a total of $1 billion, and more worryingly, this year's performance has not improved.

However, Virgin Galactic has considerable cash in the bank, and as of March 31 this year, the company's financial report showed $1.2 billion worth of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and marketable securities, but the problem is, that the company is trying to Whether these funds can maintain normal operations while expanding the scale of the business.

Given Virgin Galactic's ongoing expenses, in order to improve profitability, the company will likely need at least 150-200 revenue-generating missions per year, including crewed and research payload missions.

In fact, Virgin Galactic needs higher revenue, the company's rocket engines use a mixture of fuels, only some of the components can be reused, and the maintenance costs of the space plane and its VMS Eve carrier aircraft are considerable. Last week, Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Michael Colglazier said the company is building a fleet of spacecraft and launch vehicles at Spaceport America, New Mexico, the company's commercial space launch facility, that is expected to support 400 people a year. flight.

This means that Virgin Galactic will have a second spacecraft, VSS Imagine, which will be ready for commercial service the following year after delivery. It is expected to be a Delta-class spacecraft with a flight turnaround time of about a week and will be ready in 2025 or 2026. In addition, the company has received orders for two carrier aircraft from Boeing's Aurora Flight Sciences.

This all seemed credible if Virgin Galactic's previous predictions were to be believed, but it wasn't. Branson's original prediction that the company's space plane could send humans to the edge of space was only a decade later. Realized, the company may delay the flight plan as the development of the Delta-class spacecraft is upgraded.

In addition to the above problems, operational technical issues also need to be considered. In history, almost every aerospace project that has proved difficult to increase the number of flights has technical challenges, accidents, and production line problems to varying degrees, ranging from 1-2 times a year. Spaceflight, going up to 10 per year is hard, doing hundreds of missions a year is even harder because it's never been done before. Virgin Galactic must do this with limited financial resources, while regularly releasing financial statements publicly to address the concerns of the company's shareholders.

Future space tourism

Branson's successful flight in 2021 unquestionably ushered in the modern era of space tourism, and since then, NASA has launched the Crew Dragon twice, sending eight astronauts to the International Space Station, while, The Russian "Soyuz" manned spacecraft has completed two launches and sent 6 astronauts to the International Space Station. In 2021, a total of 4 manned spaceflights will be completed, carrying 14 astronauts to the International Space Station.

In contrast, Virgin Galactic has completed a total of six suborbital commercial tourism flights and three manned orbital flights, carrying a total of 41 space passengers. It is reported that before Branson completes the 2021 flight, more than 95% of the manned flight is completed by the government by sending astronauts to the officially designed and built aircraft, however, the number of space passengers in the past 12 months is almost 3 times as many as professional astronauts, and that trend is likely to continue.

At present, space tourism is mainly a "rich man's game", of course, there have been many efforts by related agencies, such as: the "Human Space Program" and Jared Isaacman's "Inspiration Mission", which plans to send ordinary passengers into space. But space tourism expert Alan Ladwig said that, for now, most space passengers are still rich and the super-rich.

Virgin Galactic costs $450,000 for a space ticket, and while Blue Origin has not disclosed the price of space tickets, each ticket is said to cost at least $1 million. Radwig said: "Achieving $50,000 per space ticket is a coveted goal, but it's still years away, and the current phase of space tourism is characterized as a pioneering phase, and we're still many years away. The mass market stage where the cost of adventure tourism activities such as mountaineering, globetrotting or racing is similar.”