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Virgin Galactic completes new spaceship manufacturing facility
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Virgin Galactic announced Wednesday it completed its manufacturing facility that will assemble its next-generation Delta spaceships, which will fly to space from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.
Last month, Virgin Galactic flew to space from the Spaceport for the second time in 2024 and its 12th spaceflight overall since July 2021. But the company has said it will retire that spaceship — the VSS Unity — and pause all spaceflights from New Mexico until the Delta ship is ready.
The Phoenix facility has two hangars with multiple bays, designed to maximize flexibility in building and testing the new spaceship, the company said.
Virgin Galactic said in a news release that it expects the spaceship to be completed in the first quarter of 2025. That spaceship will then be tested on the ground in Phoenix before being ferried by Virgin Galactic’s mothership to the Spaceport for air tests before it restarts commercial operations, which Virgin Galactic expects to begin in 2026.
Virgin Galactic flies to space by having a mothership takeoff from a runway at the Spaceport with the spaceship attached to it. The mothership flies to about 50,000 feet before the spaceship detaches, fires up its rocket motors and shoots into suborbit.
“The completion of our new manufacturing facility is an important milestone in the development of our fleet of next-generation spaceships, the key to our scale and profitability,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement. “Tooling will begin arriving in a matter of months to support spaceship final assembly, which we expect to commence in Q1 2025.”
How NM is affected
The new spaceship will seat up to six private passengers — Unity could carry four — and be able to fly up to eight missions per month, significantly increasing access to space and the revenue from spaceflights that New Mexico receives.
Scott McLaughlin, the executive director of Spaceport America, last month told the Journal that “Virgin Galactic launches are the most important and the biggest things we do.”
Spaceport officials said the facility in southern New Mexico will see a decrease in activity and revenue during Virgin Galactic’s pause. But if the company can complete the ship and fly more passengers to space more often, that will have a significant increase in the Spaceport’s revenue. Additionally, there are other customers and tenants at the Spaceport.
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Virgin Galactic stock
Virgin Galactic stock was trading at around $7 per share on Wednesday. It’s 52-week high was $86.40.
In the first quarter of 2024, the company reported $2 million in revenue and a net loss of $102 million. Virgin Galactic reported $126 million in free cash flow and $867 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.
That cash, company officials said, will go toward building and testing the new class of spaceships.
