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It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

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Branson sells off more of his Virgin Galactic stock

He’s getting out while the getting is good: In the past three days Richard Branson sold another $150 million worth of his Virgin Galactic stock.

The stock price for these sales was about $27, more than twice the value when the company went public in November 2019.

Including his stock sales in May ’20, Branson has now sold about 30% of his share in the company, leaving him holding only about a 20% share. Essentially, Virgin Galactic is no longer his company.

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic now says it will not begin tourist flights until ’22. Whether it can survive that long is another question. It certainly hasn’t delivered on any of Branson’s endless grandiose promises, beginning almost two decades ago in 2005.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Chris Lopes

    Branson was in on the ground floor of private space tourism, but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make it work. I have a feeling his heart was never really into it. It was all a scam for him.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic now says it will not begin tourist flights until ’22.

    Virgin Galactic has been having year for year slips for several years, now. This indicates that no real progress is being made and is a serious problem for any company hoping to deliver a product as a revenue source.

    I doubt that Branson founded Virgin Galactic as a scam, but after discovering technical problems more than a decade ago, he seems to have been unwilling to make the tradeoffs necessary to overcome those problems. What I don’t understand is why the other owners are content with the year for year slips and the continued lack of interest in problem solving.

    Fortunately, we have companies such as NanoRacks, Rocket Lab, Sierra Nevada, and SpaceX that are clearly interested in doing actual business in space.

  • Jeff Wright

    Stratolaunch could carry a Blackhorse sized rocketplane without hybrid motors.

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