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WASHINGTON – Virgin Galactic announced on August 5 that it was resuming ticket sales at significantly higher prices, but would not start flying its existing suborbital space tourism customers until the second half of next year.
As part of its quarterly financial results, the company said it was immediately starting ticket sales, which had been on hold for several years. Those who have signed up for the company’s “One Small Step” program, with a down payment of $ 1,000, will have the first opportunity to purchase seats on future suborbital space flights.
The announcement was not unexpected as company officials had previously said they would resume ticket sales once company founder Richard Branson traveled to space on SpaceShipTwo. Branson was on SpaceShipTwo’s last flight on July 11 from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
What was new was the price: starting at $ 450,000, well above the $ 250,000 the company was charging before suspending ticket sales. The company will offer individual seats, multiple seats on the same flight and entire flights. “$ 450,000 is the starting price,” Michael Colglazier, managing director of Virgin Galactic, said on a earnings conference call. “If someone wants to buy a full flight and buy all the seats on the flight, there will be a modest premium that goes against that.”
Colglazier has suggested that ticket sales will be open for a limited time as the company tries to control the demand for seats against the supply of flights. He only said the company expected to sell a “significant” number of seats but did not offer a more quantitative estimate.
Virgin Galactic has pushed back when existing and new customers will start flying. Earlier this year, it planned to begin commercial service in early 2022 after its current SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, complete a maintenance window slated to begin in the fall.
This maintenance period will begin immediately after the next SpaceShipTwo flight, scheduled for the end of September under a contract with the Italian Air Force. However, this maintenance period will last several months longer than expected.
“Currently Eve and Unity fly at low speed intervals, and that rate is limited by the amount and frequency of maintenance and inspection work performed after each flight,” said Colglazier. “Finding a path to allow moderate flight speed intervals from our existing vessels has been a key priority. “
During this maintenance window, Virgin Galactic will make changes to VSS Unity to reduce turnaround times from seven to eight weeks to four to five weeks. WhiteKnightTwo will undergo upgrades “adding durability to the ship,” he said. The aircraft can currently only make about ten flights before major inspections and maintenance; the work ahead is designed to expand this to no less than 100 flights.
“The ability to fly Eve much more frequently is very powerful and clearly the right thing for the business to do. The question is now against later, ”he said. The company concluded that doing it now, before business began, was less disruptive than waiting. “We don’t want to take Eve out later once we really start building our private astronaut business.”
With the additional work on WhiteKnightTwo, which will be performed at Virgin Galactic’s plant in Mojave, Calif., The aircraft will not be ready to resume flights until mid-2022. The company will conduct a flight test of the VSS Unity with a full crew on boarding in the third quarter, followed by the start of commercial flights at the end of the third quarter.
Virgin Galactic will also begin test flights in the second half of 2022 of VSS Imagine, its first SpaceShipIII vehicle that the company unveiled in March. Colglazier said work on a second SpaceShipIII vehicle, VSS Inspire, is on hold to focus resources on VSS Imagine, VSS Unity and VMS Eve.
The company is betting its long-term sustainability on a future “Delta-class” of suborbital space planes, which would be launched from a next-generation aircraft that would replace WhiteKnightTwo. He expects these vehicles to be stolen more frequently and affordably than current vehicles, allowing the company to increase its theft rate and turn to profitability.
“The key to our ramp-up is really to rely heavily on the Delta-class as well as getting motherships that will carry all of these spacecraft,” he said, declining to provide details on them. production plans and schedules for these vehicles. “The Delta Class and the new Mothership program are clearly important new programs for us as a company and we will align our energy with them. “
These programs will also require significant capital, as will other efforts, such as the plans discussed by Colglazier to develop a “campus” near Spaceport America for training and accommodation to support an increased theft rate. The company raised $ 500 million in July through a stock sale that will be used for these various efforts.
Virgin Galactic recorded just $ 571,000 in revenue in the second quarter, mostly thanks to the theft of research payloads on a SpaceShipTwo flight in May. The company recorded a net loss of $ 94 million in the quarter.
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