On Thursday, publicly traded spaceflight company Virgin Galactic shared on social media a new photo of its next-generation spacecraft being towed outside its factory in Mesa, Arizona.
You remember Virgin Galactic, right? The space tourism company was founded 22 years ago by Sir Richard Branson to bring space flight to the masses. Hundreds of people started buying tickets to space about two decades ago. And after a long, and sometimes deadly, development campaign, the company reached outer space (defined, somewhat controversially, as altitudes of 80 km and above) in December 2018.
The company began flying passengers with its VSS in May 2021 Unity spacecraft, and complete an impressive six space flights in 2023. But a few months later, in June 2024, Virgin Galactic stopped flying the VSS. Unity Focusing on the development of its next generation vehicle capable of more frequent, low-cost space flights.
Since then, the company has been largely quiet, making this week’s new hardware reveal notable. So Virgin Galactic is still moving forward, but the question is where it’s going, and with it, the entire suborbital space tourism industry.
difficult to make profit
Spaceflight remains an expensive and dangerous business, even for companies focusing on relatively simple suborbital flights.
There came a time about five years ago when the market looked ready to move forward. During the summer of 2021, both Virgin Galactic and its US-based rival, Blue Origin, began commercial flights. Famously, Branson and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos both went to space within a few weeks of each other.
Both companies have had strong demand for their services.
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