Why Virgin Galactic Stock came out on Thursday

What happened

Galactic Virgo (NYSE: SPCE) The stock rose a bit today, rising nearly 6% before falling back to close 3.9%. The move came in response to a 2pm tweet from the company announcing its next test flight. But here’s the curious thing:

They are not testing the spacecraft which failed its flight test in December; they test the mother ship which door the space plane instead.

So what

As Virgin Galactic explained without explaining it: “Our mother ship, the VMS Eve, will fly from Spaceport America, New Mexico, today and another tomorrow … to simulate the phase of flight. hovered and approached SpaceShipTwo Unity. ” And unless something gets lost in the translation, that seems to mean they’ll be using the fully atmospheric VMS Eve to test how the space-capable VSS Unity would land after visiting space.

It’s extremely curious, first of all, because the two planes don’t look alike, or don’t fly. It is therefore difficult to see one serving as a close proxy for the other. And secondly, because it was the spacecraft (Unity) that had engine issues in the last round of tests – not the mothership (Eve) – and therefore, it is the spacecraft, not the mothership, which seems to need more testing. flying.

Now what

Either way, investors seem to view today’s news as progress some so, at least, and perhaps as the first step towards Virgin Galactic doing another test flight test of VSS Unity in the near future.

Once that happens and is successful, the company should be back on track to send Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson into space and later allow paying customers to get on board. In short, today’s news may be just a small step towards space, but at least it’s headed in the right direction.