Verified facts grounded in source documentation.
Virgin Galactic has a framework agreement with Italian companies Altec and Sitael, working in cooperation with Italian government agencies, to establish SpaceShipTwo operations at the Taranto-Grottaglie Airport, and that agreement set no start date for flights.
Virgin Galactic announced the merger with Social Capital Hedosophia on 2019-07-09.
Virgin Galactic expects to build up commercial operations rapidly and be profitable as soon as 2021 after receiving an $800,000,000 infusion from a merger with a public investment vehicle.
The $1,500,000,000 valuation is a 5.5 multiple of Virgin Galactic’s projected EBITDA of about $270,000,000 for the period when commercial operations are expected to achieve scale.
The $1,500,000,000 valuation of the merged company is 2.5 times Virgin Galactic’s projected 2023 revenue of $600,000,000.
Richard Branson plans to be on Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight and seeks to start commercial flights 2019, perhaps as soon as July.
Plans to develop SpaceShipTwo date back to Richard Branson’s formation of Virgin Galactic in September 2004 and plans to license SpaceShipOne technology from Scaled Composites and Paul Allen.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle VSS Unity performed its highest test flight to date on 2018-12-13, reaching a peak altitude of 83 km.
Virgin Galactic originally announced plans in September 2004 to develop a vehicle based on SpaceShipOne.
Virgin Galactic signed a letter of intent with the Italian Space Agency to perform a dedicated SpaceShipTwo research flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico in 2019 that includes training of an Italian payload specialist.
Virgin Galactic spun off Virgin Orbit in March 2017.