Virgin Galactic reveals issue with WhiteKnightTwo
Capitalism in space: On the same day that Virgin Galactic unveiled a $130 million loss in its first quarter report, it also announced that it might have to delay the next flight of its Unity suborbital spacecraft because of an undisclosed “wear-and-tear issue” on its carrier airplane.
From the second link:
[Mike Moses, president of space missions and safety], in response to later questions from analysts, did not disclose the specific component of the aircraft that was at the heart of the issue, but described it as a “family of items that relate to fatigue and long-term stress” of the airplane. It was not an issue with the number of flights of VMS Eve, which first flew in 2008 and has made fewer than 300 flights since.
Engineers are currently examining the plane to determine if additional maintenance is needed now to correct that problem, with an update expected next week. Virgin Galactic had planned to perform work on the plane this fall during a downtime that would also include work on VSS Unity, but Moses said engineers are now looking at whether some of that work needs to be moved up.
If maintenance is needed now, it would delay the schedule of flight tests for SpaceShipTwo, but Moses said it was “a little too early” to know how long that would be.
They had previously announced that the next flight would be in May. They will decide in the next week whether to delay it.
Meanwhile, the company’s stock price continues to tumble, dropping from a high of about $62 earlier this year to a low of about $14 today. And I would say that the price is still over-priced. The path to profit for Virgin Galactic has become extremely narrow, with few options and not much margin, especially with Blue Origin now only two months away from its first commercial suborbital tourist flight.
Richard Branson started Virgin Galactic shortly after the SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004, promising hundreds of commercial passenger flights per year in only a few years. Seventeen years later no such flights have ever occurred. Worse, not only will Blue Origin likely do the first commercial suborbital flight first, SpaceX and Axiom are likely to complete the first orbital tourism flights before Virgin Galactic.
No harm to Branson however. He has sold off most of his stock in the company, and did it when its price was still high.
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: On the same day that Virgin Galactic unveiled a $130 million loss in its first quarter report, it also announced that it might have to delay the next flight of its Unity suborbital spacecraft because of an undisclosed “wear-and-tear issue” on its carrier airplane.
From the second link:
[Mike Moses, president of space missions and safety], in response to later questions from analysts, did not disclose the specific component of the aircraft that was at the heart of the issue, but described it as a “family of items that relate to fatigue and long-term stress” of the airplane. It was not an issue with the number of flights of VMS Eve, which first flew in 2008 and has made fewer than 300 flights since.
Engineers are currently examining the plane to determine if additional maintenance is needed now to correct that problem, with an update expected next week. Virgin Galactic had planned to perform work on the plane this fall during a downtime that would also include work on VSS Unity, but Moses said engineers are now looking at whether some of that work needs to be moved up.
If maintenance is needed now, it would delay the schedule of flight tests for SpaceShipTwo, but Moses said it was “a little too early” to know how long that would be.
They had previously announced that the next flight would be in May. They will decide in the next week whether to delay it.
Meanwhile, the company’s stock price continues to tumble, dropping from a high of about $62 earlier this year to a low of about $14 today. And I would say that the price is still over-priced. The path to profit for Virgin Galactic has become extremely narrow, with few options and not much margin, especially with Blue Origin now only two months away from its first commercial suborbital tourist flight.
Richard Branson started Virgin Galactic shortly after the SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004, promising hundreds of commercial passenger flights per year in only a few years. Seventeen years later no such flights have ever occurred. Worse, not only will Blue Origin likely do the first commercial suborbital flight first, SpaceX and Axiom are likely to complete the first orbital tourism flights before Virgin Galactic.
No harm to Branson however. He has sold off most of his stock in the company, and did it when its price was still high.
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
It’s amazing to me (and I have an MBA with a concentration in Accounting and Finance and worked in Treasury (the part of the company that interacted with Wall Street) for one of the largest companies in the world) after I retired from the Army) that Branson has not been prosecuted for securities fraud (classic “Pump N Dump”) and Virgin Galactic delisted from the exchanges. Sure looks like it’s headed for penny stock territory – you know, you buy a hundred shares of a Canadian mine up in the Yukon for five bucks as a gag gift. Or maybe it will declare bankruptcy before then,
For “has” please substitute “has not”
Col Beausabre: I have corrected the post, knowing now for sure what you intended to say.
The White Knight should finish its days as a Coast Guard drone sent to drop raft/relief packages to distressed mariners and such.
SS2 would be mounted in front of Spaceport as a display of that state science fiction museum. Let the kids play in it.
I wonder if its a carbon fiber problem?