Virgin Galactic plans to bring a tourist into space every day, the chief says

Virgin Galactic CEO proposed to bring tourists to the edge of space in addition to one flight a day, as the private space company wants to capitalize on the success of founder Sir Richard Branson test flight on the weekend.

However, Michael Colglazier, who took the helm of Virgin Galactic a year ago, did not set a timetable for the company to expand its business operations and admitted it would face major hurdles to expand in the short term. “I think for a while this will be a very supply-constrained business,” he said.

Branson’s test flight on Sunday was nine days ahead of Jeff Bezos’ first flight aboard a rocket from his private space company, Blue Origin. The early departure could give Virgin Galactic valuable extra publicity in trying to build the first commercial space tourism business, with two more tests this year before they go on paying passengers in 2022.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Colglazier said the company planned to replace its current spacecraft prototype with two new spacecraft a year that are designed to be maintained more easily, which will lead to faster changes. between flights. It was also considered how to jump into large-scale production of a future version of the spacecraft that will be designed with ease of manufacture in mind, he added.

“At all spaceports we will be targeting about 400 flights a year,” Colglazier said. “I am expecting a high number of digits to a low two-digit number of spacecraft [at each site] in order to reach such figures ”.

Following the success of this weekend’s test, Virgin Galactic would also look to expand its operations to its first base in New Mexico and “find other space ports around the world and start taking it to more places, ”he added.

Still, with only four passengers on each flight, Virgin Galactic faces a severe shortage of seats in the short term. More than 600 people have left an average of $ 130,000 each for the chance to fly in one of their spaceships, while another 1,000 have paid $ 1,000.

Branson was due to arrive in space later this summer, but advanced his flight plans last month just days after Bezos announced the date of his own space trip. Colglazier denied that Branson had been in a race to defeat Bezos. Instead, he said, Branson had changed his plans because he no longer needed to take a second flight to test the company’s customer experience, the official role he had been assigned to testing.

Referring to the huge publicity provoked by the fast-fire announcements that had seemed to clash between Branson and Bezos, he said, “The juiciest story looked like a multimillion-dollar space race. It wasn’t.”