-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Virgin Galactic
- Thread starter Cosmacelf
- Start date
Eric Berger interviews Mike Moses: Virgin Galactic’s president explains how VSS Unity is now flying frequently
And he says that they want to work up to flying daily.
No talk in the article about at what flight rate they will be profitable. Berger does ask some pointed questions.
He seems to be implying that someday the vehicle (their next generation vehicles) won’t need pilots.
And he says that they want to work up to flying daily.
No talk in the article about at what flight rate they will be profitable. Berger does ask some pointed questions.
Yeah. How many clients will they get with even one flight as day. That's an awful lot of people willing to shell out quite a bit for 4 minutes of weightlessness.
philw1776
Member
Let’s say they are able to get up to one flight/week with their current vehicles (it seems they are not capable of much more of a quick turnaround than that). Will that generate enough revenue to pay for the all the costs to operate just those vehicles? Because at the same time they need lots of money to develop their next generation vehicles, which is going to take a few years, I suspect. How is that going to be paid for?
Virgin Galactic looks ahead to future spaceplanes as it gears up for return to space
As Virgin Galactic prepares to begin commercial flights, the company is providing details about the profitability of its next generation of vehicles.
spacenews.com
Wikipedia says that the primary design goal of the Delta-class vehicle is to be easier to produce in volume. Virgin says that they should be flying cargo by 2025 and passengers by 2026. I wonder how many of these things they expect to build. One flight of 6 passengers per week is ~300 passengers per year per vehicle. They've already sold 600 reservations for under $250,000, and they'll have to burn through those before they can start charging $450,000.
Virgin Galactic completes third commercial SpaceShipTwo flight
Virgin Galactic performed its third commercial suborbital spaceflight Sept. 8 with three private astronauts on board.
spacenews.com
What? It took them 18 years to get Unity flying. Now they are going to go back into development? Yeesh.
spacenews.com
Virgin Galactic lays off staff as it focuses on next-generation suborbital vehicle
Virgin Galactic said it will lay off staff and cut expenses to conserve resources for its next generation of suborbital spaceplanes.
spacenews.com
philw1776
Member
One of the underappreciated facets of Elon’s companies is that he hounds them mercilessly during their startup phase when they are burning money with no revenue. In a startup, time is literally money. The longer you hang out with no revenue, the more money you burn. Any company that is effectively pre revenue for 18 years deserves to die.What? It took them 18 years to get Unity flying. Now they are going to go back into development? Yeesh.
Virgin Galactic lays off staff as it focuses on next-generation suborbital vehicle
Virgin Galactic said it will lay off staff and cut expenses to conserve resources for its next generation of suborbital spaceplanes.
Even if it dies, I suspect that Sir Richard will just create a new one that does it a different way. The guy creates companies as easily as you put on a pair of socks. He has no particular focus; he just likes starting and running businesses.
I predict that Virgin Galactic will keep clowning around with suborbital stuff until Starship gets human-rated. Then he'll buy one or more, kit them out for space tourism, build some ground support for passengers, and have SpaceX launch them for him. He may even go after a private space station - because he'll do whatever catches his fancy. The space station will fail, deorbit badly, land on Australia somewhere, his company will be fined, and he'll start over again a different way.
He may be 73, but I figure he's going to be like Rupert Murdoch and he just won't go away. If he quits at 93, that's another 20 years of Starship development. Imagine where SpaceX will be by then.
I recall reading an analysis a few months ago* saying that VG knows they will never be profitable with their current vehicle because turnaround times and operational costs are too high so they are going to develop a new vehicle that will be profitable. But that is going to take a lot of money that they don’t necessarily have, and attracting investors will be, umm… “challenging”.What? It took them 18 years to get Unity flying. Now they are going to go back into development? Yeesh.
Virgin Galactic lays off staff as it focuses on next-generation suborbital vehicle
Virgin Galactic said it will lay off staff and cut expenses to conserve resources for its next generation of suborbital spaceplanes.
* Edit: see my post #195 upthread.
Ars Technica: No further investments in Virgin Galactic, says Richard Branson
Not sure who would consider the company a worthwhile investment.
From Eric Berger’s latest Rocket Report newsletter:
But VG stated last year that getting the next gen mothership into operation is critical to the success of the company. If the company building the ship is now suing VG, and the ship will cost twice as much as planned and take years longer to become operational, VG seems doomed. It is my understanding that Branson has said he won’t be putting any more money into the company.
It's been doomed from the very start. The thing has no purpose other than tourist flights for the very wealthy.
Sure, but I meant doomed financially, not conceptually. There are likely thousands of people who would pay for flights. So there is a business case for the company if it can get its flight costs down, which the second gen ship is designed to do.
It's doomed financially because it is doomed conceptually. It requires a lot of wealthy people with more money than sense. That was true for a short time while interest rates were near zero. Money was thrown around casually, and every crazy idea that a wealthy person came up with was possible. That's why we have Tesla and SpaceX. Those companies could not be created in the current financial environment. They barely survived even in the extremely favorable environment of the 2000s. They only exist because they became profitable before the interest rate door was closed.
Virgin Galactic didn't move fast enough. They're still in startup mode 20 years after their founding. The money for building up isn't there, and the casual money that the wealthy had for those 20 years has either faded or vanished entirely. The fact that Richard Branson isn't putting more money into the project confirms that.
The money may come back. Apparently the rate of IPOs in 2024 is the strongest that's been seen in a decade. But it takes a very favorable environment for such a pointless expenditure of resources. Such environments don't come along very often and they don't last long. Virgin Galactic is a bit like Douglas Adams' Magrathea; a place where the hyper-wealthy can have custom planets built. But if the galactic economy isn't strong enough, the business is shut down and they go into hibernation until it's ready again. That's what Virgin Galactic would need to do.
I also never believed in the VG technology. "Incredibly risky and complex" comes to mind. In this era of automated spaceflights, VG relies on experienced pilots in both the mothership and rocket to not make any mistakes, and to recover from unexpected anomalies. And their ships have all been hand built custom one-of pieces.
Excellent analogy. But if VG had been able to build their next gen vehicles on budget and in the planned timeframe they would have only needed a few hundred customers a year to be profitable, I suspect. And given that there are tens of millions of people globally who can easily afford to pay for a VG ticket, it seems possible the company could have succeeded. But it now appears it will fail.
Similar threads
