Virgin Galactic reopens suborbital ticket sale, raises price, delays next flight
Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced yesterday that it is resuming ticket sales for flights on its reusable SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, raising the price from the old price of $250,000 to a new price of $450,000.
Virgin Galactic is offering customers three options: purchase a single seat, buy several together or book an entire flight on the eight-passenger Unity (or other space planes that come into operation, such as the recently built VSS Imagine). The company also sells seats for microgravity research and professional astronaut training. Those are in a different tier, going for $600,000 apiece, Colglazier said during a call with investors on Thursday afternoon.
The announcement also revealed that they are delaying their next flight until September. That flight has been scheduled for the summer for months. The company is also delaying the start of regular commercial flights until late in ’22, in order to make some upgrades to their spacecraft.
By that time, regular orbital tourist flights will have become almost routine. Moreover, one has the option to experience weightlessness for far less buying a ticket on one of the various companies that fly “vomit comet” airplanes.
One wonders if the demand for these flights will be sustainable. We shall see.
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Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced yesterday that it is resuming ticket sales for flights on its reusable SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, raising the price from the old price of $250,000 to a new price of $450,000.
Virgin Galactic is offering customers three options: purchase a single seat, buy several together or book an entire flight on the eight-passenger Unity (or other space planes that come into operation, such as the recently built VSS Imagine). The company also sells seats for microgravity research and professional astronaut training. Those are in a different tier, going for $600,000 apiece, Colglazier said during a call with investors on Thursday afternoon.
The announcement also revealed that they are delaying their next flight until September. That flight has been scheduled for the summer for months. The company is also delaying the start of regular commercial flights until late in ’22, in order to make some upgrades to their spacecraft.
By that time, regular orbital tourist flights will have become almost routine. Moreover, one has the option to experience weightlessness for far less buying a ticket on one of the various companies that fly “vomit comet” airplanes.
One wonders if the demand for these flights will be sustainable. We shall see.
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.
Winged spaceflight deserves better. A fly-back booster with slide off foam wing leading edge bumpers might help.
Anyone notice that during that flight as well as Bezos’s flight almost no time was spent by anyone looking out the window, but instead they played with weightlessness nearly the whole time, frolicking with each other rather than doing the one thing that is unreproducible anywhere else?
You get the opportunity to see the earth from above, and instead you just spin around, instead, only looking at the insides of a tin can.
Maroons.
1) How about a fourth option? You go away never come back
2) “Anyone notice that during that flight as well as Bezos’s flight almost no time was spent by anyone looking out the window, but instead they played with weightlessness nearly the whole time, frolicking with each other:”
Here’s how to do it a lot cheaper and easier
https://www.gozerog.com/
https://www.incredible-adventures.com/zero-g-how.html
They are not serious about space flight.
This company is nothing more than a cheap carnival ride.
Looking out the window or doing aerial summersaults is not the point of taking the flight. The tourist is buying bragging rights for going into space. If he wants to look out the window at the curvature of the Earth, then he doesn’t have to go that high, but he has the opportunity to do so on the way up and the way back down. If he only wants to do those summersaults, he can fly on the zero-G plane. On the other hand, he gets all three on a suborbital flight, and he probably is not in zero-G long enough to feel sick, whereas the zero-G plane can make someone sick.
Going to orbit gives plenty of time to look out the window at a very different view than even the suborbital flights. Summersaults can last for hours, not minutes. To avoid getting ill the tourist may have to keep his head still for a long period of time during the early orbits, but a long flight may still leave enough time to enjoy the view and enjoy the gymnastics after the disorientation has passed. It is still bragging rights that the tourist is paying for.
Meanwhile, neither company seems to be as ready for regular operations as we had expected. I am thinking more and more that their flights last month were only done because of pressure put on them by the upcoming commercial tourist Dragon flight in September. Virgin Galactic still has “enhancements” to make on their carrier plane, and Blue Origin still is not ready to sell tickets to the general public. But they both beat SpaceX with space tourist flights, which has given them bragging rights.