Nearly a full year has passed since Virgin Galactic last flew its SpaceShipTwo vehicle into space, but the company says it is progressing toward a more rapid cadence of flights.
On Wednesday, Virgin Galactic announced a deal with Boeing-owned Aurora Flight Sciences to design and manufacture two next-generation motherships. A mothership carries the Virgin Galactic spaceship to an altitude of about 15 km before releasing it, after which the spaceship fires its rocket engine and flies above 90 km.
In a news release, Virgin Galactic said it expects to take delivery of the first of the two new motherships in 2025. The company presently has a single carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, that made its first flight in 2008. Virgin has not said how long this vehicle will be able to fly missions, nor how much refurbishment it will need as it begins flying more frequently.
"Our next-generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations," said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in the release. "They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain, and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. Supported by the scale and strength of Boeing, Aurora is the ideal manufacturing partner for us as we build our fleet to support 400 flights per year at Spaceport America."
Here’s why Richard Branson’s flight matters—and, yes, it really matters
That target of 400 flights per year is believed to be the cadence Virgin Galactic needs to hit to reach profitability. That seems like a stretch, given that the company's VSS Unity has not flown since July 2021 and will not return to service until at least the fourth quarter of this year.
As per usual at Ars, the comments are as good or better than the story itself.
A few days ago's story:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07 ... h#comments
I wouldn't touch this stock with a 10-ft pole, and I wouldn't ride on it if they paid me $500k, which is what they want for a ride.
They chose the wrong ship 15 or 20 years ago when it was time to set up shop. They went with an all-manual Burt Rutan (cowboy, "The Right Stuff" type of guy) design, and now it's time to pay the piper for a bad choice.
Blue Origin and SpaceX are both automated systems, no pilots.
Today's story:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07 ... an-encore/
There's no way VG lasts until 2025.Virgin’s long-term prospects
By contrast, Virgin Galactic does not have those deep pockets. Branson, its original backer, has sold much of his ownership in the publicly traded company. And without a steady stream of spaceflights, the company is losing a lot of money. In 2020 and 2021, it lost a combined $1 billion. This year looks little better.
The company does have a considerable amount of cash in the bank. As of March 31, Virgin Galactic reported having $1.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, and marketable securities on hand. The question is whether that money will hold out while the company attempts to scale up its operations.
To reach profitability, given its ongoing expenses, it's likely that Virgin Galactic needs to fly at least 150 or 200 revenue flights per year, consisting of a mix of passenger and research payload missions.
But that number may be even higher. The company's rocket engine, which uses a hybrid mix of fuels, is only partially reusable. And the maintenance costs for the spacecraft and its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, are likely considerable. In fact, the chief executive of Virgin Galactic, Michael Colglazier, said last week that the company is working to build a fleet of spacecraft and carrier aircraft to support 400 flights per year from its base at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
To that end, Virgin Galactic has a second spaceship, VSS Imagine, that could enter commercial service next year. And it is counting on its "Delta-class" line of spaceships, planned to have a turnaround time of one week, to be ready by 2025 or 2026. Additionally, the company has orders to purchase two more carrier aircraft from Boeing's Aurora Flight Sciences.
All of this might seem plausible if Virgin Galactic had been reliable with its projections in the past, but it has not. Branson originally predicted that his company would be flying humans to the edge of space more than a decade earlier than it actually happened. Delays seem likely as the company works through the development of the Delta spaceships.
Beyond these issues, there is the matter of operations. Almost every spaceflight project in history has proven difficult to scale up in terms of flight rates, either because of technical challenges, production line issues, accidents, or all of the above. To go from one or two spaceflights a year to 10 is hard. To go to hundreds annually is really hard because it has never been done before. And Virgin Galactic must do this with limited financial resources, all while releasing public financial statements and addressing stockholder concerns.
Finally, all of these financial projections assume that the demand for a spaceflight to about 90 km, lasting a few minutes, will remain high after the initial interest is sated. This seems possible, but it's difficult to know for sure.
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