Virgin Galactic leases facility in Arizona to build up to six of its reusable suborbital space planes
Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced on July 14, 2022 that it has leased a new facility in Mesa, Arizona where it will build up to six of its reusable suborbital space planes, with the goal of beginning commercial flights by late 2025.
The Delta class spaceship is Virgin Galactic’s production vehicle that is designed to fly weekly, supporting the Company’s target of 400 flights per year from Spaceport America. Based on current schedules, the first of these ships is expected to commence revenue-generating payload flights in late 2025, progressing to private astronaut flights in 2026.
The Company is currently selecting various suppliers to build the spaceship’s major subassemblies, which will be delivered to the new Mesa facility for final assembly. Virgin Galactic motherships will ferry completed spaceships to Spaceport America, New Mexico for flight test and commercial operation.
Combined with its recent contract award to Aurora to build two new motherships, it appears the management that replaced Richard Branson at Virgin Galactic has found that it can’t really proceed with commercial operations with the ships Branson left behind. Apparently the company is working to replace everything, and will likely delay commercial operations another few years in the process.
These decisions might be smart, but considering the company’s long history of endless delays, the buying public and the investment community might not be willing to tolerate more delays. It also remains very questionable there is enough business to justify its prediction of 400 flights per year, even if the company loses no customers.
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.
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Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced on July 14, 2022 that it has leased a new facility in Mesa, Arizona where it will build up to six of its reusable suborbital space planes, with the goal of beginning commercial flights by late 2025.
The Delta class spaceship is Virgin Galactic’s production vehicle that is designed to fly weekly, supporting the Company’s target of 400 flights per year from Spaceport America. Based on current schedules, the first of these ships is expected to commence revenue-generating payload flights in late 2025, progressing to private astronaut flights in 2026.
The Company is currently selecting various suppliers to build the spaceship’s major subassemblies, which will be delivered to the new Mesa facility for final assembly. Virgin Galactic motherships will ferry completed spaceships to Spaceport America, New Mexico for flight test and commercial operation.
Combined with its recent contract award to Aurora to build two new motherships, it appears the management that replaced Richard Branson at Virgin Galactic has found that it can’t really proceed with commercial operations with the ships Branson left behind. Apparently the company is working to replace everything, and will likely delay commercial operations another few years in the process.
These decisions might be smart, but considering the company’s long history of endless delays, the buying public and the investment community might not be willing to tolerate more delays. It also remains very questionable there is enough business to justify its prediction of 400 flights per year, even if the company loses no customers.
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.
This, along with the other carrier plane subcontract announcement, feels like a desperate attempt to reassure what investors they’ve got left to stick with them. I can imagine conversations like this:
“It will just be a few more years—really—-trust us—and our grandiose plans will be fulfilled. We’re new management, and we’re serious this time”
If you have stock in this operation, it won’t be too long before it’s worthless. IMHO, of course.
His next project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrodDBJdGuo
https://up-ship.com/blog/?p=49854
I do not trust any of their designs.
Not the engines for the rocket or the carrier plane.
The aerodynamic design of the is just flawed. The time it crashed was because the wings became unlocked under powered flight and their only answer was ‘lets not let that happen again, we will put a lock on it’.
Both designs are left overs from Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites. None of Scaled craft ever went beyond single, one off production. No commercial successes or productions.
If Virgin survives long enough to go into full production these air frame designs will be 20 years old using 20 year old production and materials. If they come out of production unchanged. My bet is they will change significantly and would be very different.
This is essentially an all new company.
Jeff Wright: that “Sky Hotel” video is hilarious. It had me LOL. It has Sir Richard written all over it.
I rarely watch you tube links… But just had to this time! And LOLd my ass off…. Brilliant!
Scaled Composites was clear that the current WhiteKnightTwo was intended only to last for the development and maybe the beginning of operations. The current SpaceShipTwo was also largely intended to provide development but not be sufficient for all the operational needs of the company. If Branson left everyone with the impression that these two craft were all that Virgin Galactic needed, then the error is his, and any investors who believed him did not do sufficient due diligence before investing.
Total waste of money if it was only intended as a test vehicle. It more than likely will not even be its own design prototype.
pzatchok wrote: “Total waste of money if it was only intended as a test vehicle.”
Test articles are very important, especially for the 1more radically different designs. SpaceShipOne cannot be considered a test vehicle for SpaceShipTwo, as it was much more of a proof of concept unit.
There is the concept of the proto-qualification unit, which is usually a design that does not vary much from other (previous) designs, and it is used to test the limits of the expected operational range. SpaceShipTwo underwent many, many flights because it is finding the operational limits, not testing them. This is why SpaceShipTwo will not reach the Karman line but only the American-recognized edge of space (about three kilometers lower than von Karman’s calculated arbitrary edge of space).