Final yr, Virgin Galactic appeared to lastly be hitting a stride towards making industrial suborbital spaceflight. The corporate flew its SpaceShipTwo rocket airplane to the sting of area six occasions in six months, giving a number of Virgin Galactic prospects a style of spaceflight after ready greater than a decade.
Lastly, it appeared that Virgin Galactic turned a nook, shifting previous the setbacks and course corrections that delayed founder Sir Richard Branson’s intention of bringing spaceflight to a wider inhabitants. Virgin Galactic officers would not describe the corporate’s subsequent step as a setback or a course correction. It is a part of an intentional enterprise technique to make Branson’s dream a actuality.
“That dream behind Virgin Galactic got here into sharp focus as we repeatedly flew spaceship Unity in 2023,” stated Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s president and CEO, in a quarterly earnings name this week. “Now, in 2024, we’re poised for much more significant accomplishments as we construct the fleet of spaceships that can flip the dream into actuality and long-term success.”
However to take action, Virgin Galactic wants to surrender on the horse that received them right here.
On 11 missions, together with take a look at flights, the VSS Unity rocket airplane has soared greater than 50 miles (80 kilometers)—the place area begins, in keeping with the US authorities’s definition—however it is going to in all probability fly simply as soon as extra. Virgin Galactic is redirecting sources towards finishing the event and testing of a brand new fleet of rocket planes generally known as Delta-class ships, which the corporate says will outclass VSS Unity in flight cadence, reusability, and revenue-earning potential.
Colglazier stated the primary of Virgin Galactic’s Delta ships is on monitor to start floor and flight testing subsequent yr, with industrial service focused for 2026 based mostly out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Yet another and accomplished
Late final yr, Virgin Galactic introduced it will retire VSS Unity by the center of 2024, following the corporate’s Galactic 07 or Galactic 08 missions. On Tuesday, an organization spokesperson confirmed to Ars that Virgin Galactic will pause flights of VSS Unity after the Galactic 07 mission slated for this spring. Which means the rocket airplane will fly to area only one extra time, taking 4 prospects into suborbital area to expertise a couple of minutes of microgravity earlier than coming again to land on a runway.
Colglazier stated this subsequent flight could have a “blended manifest of researchers and personal residents.” The corporate hasn’t recognized any of the passengers, and for the final a number of flights, hasn’t introduced the names of their passengers till after they landed.
Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic’s president of spaceline operations, stated the Galactic 07 mission, the ultimate flight of VSS Unity, is scheduled for the second quarter of this yr, someday between the start of April and the top of June. He stated engineers are taking a look at a “minor change” to a retention mechanism that malfunctioned on the Galactic 06 flight final month, inflicting an alignment pin to fall to the bottom because the rocket airplane separated from its provider plane over New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic reported the anomaly earlier this month, however Moses stated the alignment pin carried out its perform of retaining the VSS Unity spacecraft correctly aligned to its provider jet by way of pre-flight procedures till the rocket airplane separated from the plane to fireside its rocket motor and climb to the sting of area. The anomaly “posed no security menace in any respect throughout the flight,” he stated, however “clearly we do not need it to fall.”
The rationale for pulling VSS Unity off flight standing boils all the way down to cash, not any technical limitation. In August, Moses advised Ars that VSS Unity could possibly be able to 500 to 1,000 flights.