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.
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
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.
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 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).