Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, is a British-American spaceflight company focused on providing suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and researchers. As the world's first commercial spaceline, it develops and operates its own reusable spaceflight systems, including the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. While the company is shifting its focus to Delta class vehicles for commercial service in 2026, its current partners include Redwire for manufacturing research payload lockers and it operates from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
Chamath Palihapitiya will become chairman of the merged Virgin Galactic and is contributing $100,000,000 of his own money into the deal.
Virgin Galactic projects a $104,000,000 loss in 2020, breaking even in 2021, and reaching $274,000,000 in earnings in 2023.
Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and chief executive of Social Capital Hedosophia, will invest an additional $100,000,000 into Virgin Galactic.
Of the $808,000,000 total contributed to the merger, $300,000,000 will be used to purchase shares from existing Virgin Galactic shareholders, $460,000,000 will be set aside for continued growth and commercialization, and $48,000,000 will be used for transaction fees.
The $1,500,000,000 valuation of the merged company is 2.5 times Virgin Galactic’s projected 2023 revenue of $600,000,000.
Virgin Galactic projects performing 16 flights by the end of 2020 carrying 66 customers and producing $31,000,000 in revenue from those customers and other sources.
Virgin Galactic finished building an oxidizer vessel at Spaceport America and is nearing completion of a gas farm and an antenna station for its facility.
Richard Branson plans to be on Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight and seeks to start commercial flights 2019, perhaps as soon as July.
Virgin Galactic crew members Dave Mackay, Mike Masucci, and Beth Moses received commercial astronaut wings from the Federal Aviation Administration at a ceremony on 2019-04-09 at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
The Spaceship Company designed and built the HTPB rubber/nitrous oxide-fueled hybrid rocket motor propulsion system used by Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.
Virgin Galactic considers the 50-mile (80.5-kilometer) boundary to be the boundary of space even though it is below the 100-kilometer Karman Line used by other organizations.
Virgin Galactic postponed a scheduled 2019-02-20 test of SpaceShipTwo from Mojave Air and Space Port because of winds and planned to attempt the test again on 2019-02-22.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reached a peak altitude of 82.7 km on its 2018-12-13 test flight, its first above the 50-mile boundary used by U.S. government agencies to award astronaut wings.
Virgin Galactic plans to conduct a fifth test flight of its suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipTwo on 2019-02-20.
Virgin Galactic’s previous test flight on 2018-12-13 reached a peak altitude of 82.7 km and garnered astronaut wings for its pilots.
During the 2019-02-20 test flight Virgin Galactic plans to intentionally offset VSS Unity’s center of gravity left and right to assess handling.
Tim Buzza joined SpaceX months after its founding in 2002 and worked at SpaceX for 12 years before joining Virgin Galactic and later Virgin Orbit.
Virgin Galactic uses 80.5 km (80 km) as the boundary of space for awarding astronaut wings for its flights.
Virgin Galactic builds and tests its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane at its Mojave, California facilities.
Virgin Galactic has more than 600 customers who have paid at least a deposit for tickets currently valued at $250,000 each to fly on SpaceShipTwo.