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.
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
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.
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
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.