The sad story of Virgin Galactic
Link here. This so-called suborbital space tourism company, which for years has promised to fly tourists on suborbital flights to space but failed to do so, appears now to be trying to shift gears and instead make itself into a company building supersonic airplanes.
Richard Branson’s dream of a suborbital Virgin Galactic vehicle zipping passengers between distant cities at hypersonic speeds above Mach 5 (6,174 km/h, 3,836 mph) is dead. At least for now.
In August, the space tourism company he founded pivoted to a slower supersonic Mach 3 (3,704 km/h, 2,302 mph) business jet. Virgin Galactic unveiled a mission concept for an aircraft that would carry 9-19 passengers at a cruising altitude of 60,000 ft (18,288 m).
Since Branson began selling off his stock in May and became a minority owner in the company, the new management has apparently shifted its focus away from suborbital space tourism to building a supersonic airplane for commercial travel on Earth.
The problem is that there are already a lot of companies working to do this, and Virgin Galactic is in last place, even as it scrambles to find new investment capital simply to begin development.
After sixteen years, this company has so far accomplished nothing, while spending probably more than $2 billion in private capital. It now wants more, even as Richard Branson has sold off his stock at a nifty profit. (I am no stock market expert, but if I has any interest in buying stock (I do not), this would not be the stock I’d buy.)
Branson however is not entirely off the hook. His entire empire, built on transportation and tourism, is in big trouble because of the Wuhan panic. It might now all collapse, tragically crashing to Earth as did the first SpaceShipTwo several years ago.
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 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
Link here. This so-called suborbital space tourism company, which for years has promised to fly tourists on suborbital flights to space but failed to do so, appears now to be trying to shift gears and instead make itself into a company building supersonic airplanes.
Richard Branson’s dream of a suborbital Virgin Galactic vehicle zipping passengers between distant cities at hypersonic speeds above Mach 5 (6,174 km/h, 3,836 mph) is dead. At least for now.
In August, the space tourism company he founded pivoted to a slower supersonic Mach 3 (3,704 km/h, 2,302 mph) business jet. Virgin Galactic unveiled a mission concept for an aircraft that would carry 9-19 passengers at a cruising altitude of 60,000 ft (18,288 m).
Since Branson began selling off his stock in May and became a minority owner in the company, the new management has apparently shifted its focus away from suborbital space tourism to building a supersonic airplane for commercial travel on Earth.
The problem is that there are already a lot of companies working to do this, and Virgin Galactic is in last place, even as it scrambles to find new investment capital simply to begin development.
After sixteen years, this company has so far accomplished nothing, while spending probably more than $2 billion in private capital. It now wants more, even as Richard Branson has sold off his stock at a nifty profit. (I am no stock market expert, but if I has any interest in buying stock (I do not), this would not be the stock I’d buy.)
Branson however is not entirely off the hook. His entire empire, built on transportation and tourism, is in big trouble because of the Wuhan panic. It might now all collapse, tragically crashing to Earth as did the first SpaceShipTwo several years ago.
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 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
I don’t know if Virgin Galactic is in last place on development. Their subsidiary – The Spaceship Company, is partnered with a company called Boom Technology out of Colorado which will be testing their scaled down Mach 2 plane called “Baby Boom” next year. Boom Technologies is planning on making a full size 55-seat plane in 2029. Will they actually make it?
I looked up “The Spaceship Company”, and this is the spin-off of Scaled Composites to take care of the White Knight and Spaceship2 vehicles. Scaled Composites did own a percentage of the company but sold it all to Virgin in 2012. Scaled Composites was later bought out by Northrup Grumman.
Oh well, I don’t know. But Branson is in the airline business after all. So him lowering his media bar by 80 kilometers isn’t too bad, I think. Supersonic commercial aircrafts would be great!
“- Sir, we’ve got this strategic stock valuation problem of having our entire industry locked down once every two decades for various made up reasons. What should we do about it?
– Fly faster!”
Where the heck did all that money go? They didn’t built that much hardware (a handful of vehicles), and the design/tech hasn’t really evolved since the SpaceShipOne days.
he used VG as an expense dump.
Everything he did he wrote off as an expense of VG.
He never intended to actually do anything with the company except file bankruptcy in the end.
If it all worked out easy and cheaply the first time then everything was fine but since it didn’t he dropped the idea and just kept it around as a shell.
I expected as much