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First Virgin Galactic passenger flight ready for liftoff from NM's Spaceport America
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Virgin Galactic is set to hit another historical milestone Thursday morning, when the company’s first spaceflight with paying passengers on board is scheduled to launch from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.
The company initiated commercial service in late June, when it flew members of the Italian Air Force and Italy’s National Research Council into suborbit on a research-and-training mission dubbed “Galactic 1” to conduct experiments in microgravity.
But Thursday’s launch, dubbed “Galactic 2,” will be the first time private passengers will board the VSS Unity rocket for a tourist flight into space, something the company has promised for nearly 20 years since Sir Richard Branson created Virgin Galactic in 2004.
It marks the full launch of commercial service, including occasional research missions for government entities and others, plus regular monthly flights for paying passengers, Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said during a second-quarter earnings conference call last week.
“While Galactic 1 showcased our research product, Galactic 2 is going to set the stage for a new era of suborbital human space flight that will dramatically broaden access to space for private individuals,” Colglazier told investors.
Three passengers will fly on “Galactic 2,” including a mother and daughter from the Caribbean island nation of Antigua — who won seats on the Unity through a public drawing that Virgin Galactic conducted in 2021 — and an 80-year-old former Olympian athlete and lifetime adventurer who now has Parkinson’s disease.
Antigua citizens Keisha Schahaff and her daughter Anastatia Mayers will become the first mother-daughter duo to fly together to space, according to Virgin Galactic. And, at 18, Anastatia will be the second-youngest person to date to travel into suborbit.
Jon Goodman, the octogenarian who purchased a ticket to fly on Unity years ago, will be only the second person with Parkinson’s to travel into the cosmos.
“The Galactic 2 crew provides a glimpse into the breadth of access that Virgin Galactic will enable as we scale our fleet and expand our business,” Colglazier said. “…They showcase that commercial space is opening the door for opportunities that are within the aspirations of all humans.”
Three Virgin Galactic team members will fly as well, including Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses — who will join the passengers in Unity’s six-seat cabin— plus pilot Kelly Latimer and flight commander C.J. Sturckow. That sets Galactic 2 up for a few more historic milestones, according to Virgin Galactic.
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It will be the first time four women — including Moses, Latimer and the mother-daughter duo from Antigua — will travel together on a single spaceflight. And, Sturckow, who flew on the Space Shuttle four times, will mark his fourth spaceflight on Unity, making him the first astronaut to launch from Earth to space on eight different occasions.
This is the third time since the spring that Unity will rocket into suborbit from the New Mexico Spaceport, following an in-house crew flight in late May, and then June’s research mission with the Italian crew. Now, with paying passenger flights beginning Thursday, the company is moving to regular monthly launches, with five more missions planned through year-end, said Chief Financial Officer Doug Ahrens.
“With commercial service, we anticipate a monthly flight cadence beginning in August, with two commercial spaceflights in the third quarter, and three commercial spaceflights in the fourth quarter,” Ahrens told investors.
Delta ships and finances
That’s a significant achievement for Virgin Galactic as it works toward establishing weekly flights by 2026, and, eventually, daily flights.
To do that, the company is now constructing a rocket factory in Arizona to build its next-generation Delta Class spaceships, which are designed for weekly flights, rather than the monthly launches managed by VSS Unity. The company expects the first Delta ships to roll off the assembly line in 2025, followed by a year of flight testing at the spaceport, and then commercial service a year later.
Bringing those next-generation Deltas into service is critical for long-term financial sustainability, since Virgin Galactic continues to bleed hundreds of millions of dollars per year through investments in the new rocket factory and construction of its planned fleet of spaceships. The company reported another $134 million in net losses during second-quarter 2023, up from a $111 million loss in the same period last year. And it projects between $120 million and $130 million in losses in each of the next two quarters.
It still had $980 million in cash and securities on hand as of June 30 to continue financing company development. And it did report $1.9 million in revenue from April-June from the Italian research flight and from future-passenger membership fees, marking the company’s first significant quarterly revenue to date.
But even with the five upcoming flights this year, it only projects another $2 million in revenue through year-end.
That’s because it’s only now just starting to work through a backlog of 800 passenger reservations it’s built over the years, about 600 of which were sold for between $200,000 and $250,000, and only about 200 purchased at the current price of $450,000, Colglazier told investors. That revenue stream won’t climb significantly until the higher-priced passengers start flying, and until the company moves to weekly flights with the Deltas.
As a result, Virgin Galactic’s stock price remained depressed at just $3.48 a share on the New York Stock Exchange as of Tuesday afternoon.
For now, however, all eyes are riveted on Thursday’s launch at the spaceport, which will be attended by nearly 60 reporters from national and global media outlets.
It represents a major turning point for Virgin Galactic, and for New Mexico as well, said Mike Moses, president of space line missions and safety.
“When you open up a whole new industry like this, it leads to so many firsts,” Moses told the Journal. “We’re doing something that’s never been done before. It’s thrilling, and it’s all happening right here in New Mexico.”
