Virgin Galactic is replacing its WhiteKnightTwo mother ship
Virgin Galactic yesterday announced that it has hired Aurora, a Boeing subsidiary, to build two new mother ships to to replace WhiteKnightTwo and launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital space planes.
Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier said: “Our next generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. 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.” [emphasis mine]
The press release claims the first new mother ship will begin operations in 2025.
Forgive me if I am very very skeptical. The highlighted words tell us a lot about this company. First, we now have confirmation that the company has had problems maintaining WhiteKnightTwo. This fact was strongly implied when all planned flights in ’21 and ’22 were cancelled following that first passenger flight in July ’21 in order to do a full maintenance refit of WhiteKnightTwo. This press release tells us that the company’s management has recognized that WhiteKnightTwo cannot be maintained much longer.
Second, the company continues to overhype its future, even without Richard Branson. The chances of it flying 400 times per year, anytime in the near future, is so slim as to be non-existent.
Third, the need to hire an outside company to build these new mother ships also suggests that Virgin Galactic no longer has the capability of doing it itself.
Right now the company’s stock is selling for about $7 per share, well below its initial price of about $12. Expect it to fall again.
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Virgin Galactic yesterday announced that it has hired Aurora, a Boeing subsidiary, to build two new mother ships to to replace WhiteKnightTwo and launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital space planes.
Virgin Galactic Chief Executive Officer Michael Colglazier said: “Our next generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. 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.” [emphasis mine]
The press release claims the first new mother ship will begin operations in 2025.
Forgive me if I am very very skeptical. The highlighted words tell us a lot about this company. First, we now have confirmation that the company has had problems maintaining WhiteKnightTwo. This fact was strongly implied when all planned flights in ’21 and ’22 were cancelled following that first passenger flight in July ’21 in order to do a full maintenance refit of WhiteKnightTwo. This press release tells us that the company’s management has recognized that WhiteKnightTwo cannot be maintained much longer.
Second, the company continues to overhype its future, even without Richard Branson. The chances of it flying 400 times per year, anytime in the near future, is so slim as to be non-existent.
Third, the need to hire an outside company to build these new mother ships also suggests that Virgin Galactic no longer has the capability of doing it itself.
Right now the company’s stock is selling for about $7 per share, well below its initial price of about $12. Expect it to fall again.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I don’t think they are saying that one aircraft will fly 400 times per year, but that their goal is to have a “fleet” of them, with a total of 400 flights per year between them.
I agree that the odds of that occurring are…. astronomical.
Either way… 400 flights at year with six paying passengers each at $450k/head would mean an annual revenue of $1 billion/year.
That’s NOT going to happen. It’s certainly not going to happen in the Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. They can’t possibly imagine it’s going to happen. A competent trade press would call them on it.
By the way: Drop a zero. Divide by two. Could I see 40 flights/year at $225K/seat? Yeah, I could. That’s $50 million/year, which I don’t think is an unreasonable target. But you probably can’t pay for two brand-new carrier aircraft that way.
Stephen Fleming wrote “A competent trade press would call them on it.”
It seems to me, all modesty aside, that you are reading an example of a “competent trade press” right here. :)
Virgin contracted Scaled Composites to build the first White Knight 2, flown in 2008. Following that, the Virgin-owned Spaceship Company was supposed to build 2 more WK2s themselves for their fleet. That 15 YEARS have passed since the completion of the original WK2, with Virgin never building the others, shows they never had that capability, or even intent.
Scaled is now owned by Northrop Grumman, and it’s interesting that Virgin is working with Boeing’s Aurora instead for the replacement vehicles. Perhaps NG sees little benefit in teaming with Virgin at this point. Taking a quick look at Aurora’s history, they don’t seem to have done much more than drones and subscale test vehicles. They seem out of their league for a vehicle of this size.
How many hours did WK2 have on its airframe? Seems not very much over 15 years. This was basically an unscaleable boutique design never up to the lofty commercial goals sold by the departed showman Sir Richard. I’ll be shocked if this sputtering company ever flies again.
Out of the frying pan-and straight into Hades.
400 flights per year is the requirement for the minimum combined rate of flights from the two aircraft. The company’s business plan is most likely less than this rate, otherwise their requirement for the aircraft does not meet the the requirement for meeting the business plan. Most likely the business plan calls for half or a quarter as many flights per year, perhaps two flights a week, three flights a week, or a flight every other day.
WhiteKnightTwo, as with WhiteKnight, had been designed and built to support only the development phase of the spacecraft. This is why its maintenance is too expensive and too intensive for regular operations, and it is why the aircraft has worn so badly from only the development flights.
The important question is whether there are enough customers who wish to have the bragging rights of having gone to space (as defined by the U.S. rather than the rest of the world).