It's not clear whether Virgin Galactic has the cash reserves to fund a prolonged test phase.
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The suborbital space tourism industry is on life support
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Is anyone surprised?
I know there are more traditional economic factors at play (described in article), but whether talking about the Virgin flights, BO Flying Penis flights — I'm certain there's a bad joke here somewhere — the overall concept was a gimmick for the super-rich and well-connected to start with IMHO. Most likely the novelty of the idea is wearing off and thus the willingness to pay drying up? I don't know for sure, but from where I sat, gimmick was exactly the right word. More or less like an upgraded, corporate version of taking a ride on the Vomit Comet.
I know there are more traditional economic factors at play (described in article), but whether talking about the Virgin flights, BO Flying Penis flights — I'm certain there's a bad joke here somewhere — the overall concept was a gimmick for the super-rich and well-connected to start with IMHO. Most likely the novelty of the idea is wearing off and thus the willingness to pay drying up? I don't know for sure, but from where I sat, gimmick was exactly the right word. More or less like an upgraded, corporate version of taking a ride on the Vomit Comet.
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There's a reason why Jeff Epstein's circle of contacts was a thousand or so people world wide. Because the number of high net worth individuals in the entire world is very small. Consequently, it isn't hard for someone, once introduced to that creche of society, to know everyone worth knowing about.
What does Epstein have to do with space tourism?
His circle of contacts (not necessarily clients, but contacts)...are the only people in the world who can afford a 90 minute suborbital roller coaster ride for funsies. They're literally the entire market. And once they've had their ride to space and are satisfied--well, that is the entire market for the service.
What does Epstein have to do with space tourism?
His circle of contacts (not necessarily clients, but contacts)...are the only people in the world who can afford a 90 minute suborbital roller coaster ride for funsies. They're literally the entire market. And once they've had their ride to space and are satisfied--well, that is the entire market for the service.
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I read the book Test Gods a couple years ago. It was about the development of the original craft, the test campaign, and the handoff between Scaled Composites and Virgin. Check it out if you're interested in engineering, aviation, program management, or just drama in general.
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I don't understand why they shut down in the first place? Investing so much time and energy into a product (that yes, did kill people, unfortunately) then using it only a handful of times for a seemly rabid rich-people market because it ... wasn't profitable?
They had a working solution. Did it really "wear out" after only using it a few times? Could you not make up the "low cost" of a ticket in volume? Was this an FAA thing about flight regulations so they couldn't launch as much as they wanted? And rather than retrofitting the old one they are designing a new one from the ground up and THIS time it will work?
Or is this just Sunk-Cost-Fallacy meets Rich-British-Man-itis?
They had a working solution. Did it really "wear out" after only using it a few times? Could you not make up the "low cost" of a ticket in volume? Was this an FAA thing about flight regulations so they couldn't launch as much as they wanted? And rather than retrofitting the old one they are designing a new one from the ground up and THIS time it will work?
Or is this just Sunk-Cost-Fallacy meets Rich-British-Man-itis?
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Is this still built according to the Burt Rutan philosophy of spacecraft control? Ie that it should be flown almost completely manually putting massive strain on the pilots staying within critical parameters?
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I thought they were already bankrupt, but it turns out I was confusing Virgin Galactic with Virgin Orbit.
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Whatever happened to the related aspirational market segment of stratospheric balloon tourism? Which provides much the same view of Earth's curvature, during a longer and more leisurely trip, at a lower price, but without the freefall segment. ...hmm... Summary article (CNBC, Jul 2024), but of those three, Space Perspective collapsed (Talk of Titusville, Feb 2025) and World View was acquired in 2026 and no longer speaks of passenger flights (Oct 2021, May 2022) -- although they still have a "space tourism support" email address.
- Zephalto - Toulouse, France; Vincent Farret d'Astiès
- Space Perspective - Space Coast, Florida, USA; Jane Poynter (see also: Ars, Feb 2024)
- World View - Tucson, AZ, USA; Ryan Harman (see also: Ars, Jun 2019)
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The original design, and frankly, more than likely, this new design as well, are overly complex, very possibly prone to fatigue, and require a lot of skill and oversight to both maintain and operate. There is an enormously vast distance between a product that almost cuts it, and one that is both profitable and sustainable
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If you are talking about Virgin they shutdown because the spaceplane had excessive wear. It was never going to work for the cadence they needed to break even. They couldn't even sustain their anemic cadence much less increase it by an order of magnitude.
For Blue it was more resources. A lot of the people on New Shepard are now working in the Blue lander program.
Both worked as a proof of concept but had turnaround and scalability issues. To make this work economically you really need weekly flights if not daily flights. Even at $1M a ticket with 4 to 8 people that is $4M to $8M gross revenue per flight. There is huge operational overhead meaning you need to fly hundreds if not thousands of customers per year. If you can't turn the vehicle around in a few days and get 100, 200, 300 launches a year you can't make the math work.
If suborbital tourism every works economically I think it will require much larger vehicle. Scale the NS capsule up to be two stories and twice the diameter holding 30 people. Have it land using retropropulsion with methalox thrusters. Parachutes as emergency backup only they are expensive to recover, inspect, and repack. If you can someday turn something like that around daily and have three vehicles then at $300k ea that is $1B gross annually. Now you are approaching the scale where you might be able to turn a profit.
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I really don't get the million dollar suborbital tourism thing.
If I just wanted to experience weightlessness, I could charter these guys for much less.
If I wanted to claim I'd been to space, then I would want to actually spend some real time in space. Suborbital flights are shorter than layovers at airports, and what credible person claims they've been to [insert state or country here] when all they did was move from one airplane to a second one without leaving the airport?
If I just wanted to experience weightlessness, I could charter these guys for much less.
If I wanted to claim I'd been to space, then I would want to actually spend some real time in space. Suborbital flights are shorter than layovers at airports, and what credible person claims they've been to [insert state or country here] when all they did was move from one airplane to a second one without leaving the airport?
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you don't get it, because you don't have $1 million laying around waiting to be spent
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If I had the money I would do it. Not for bragging rights or to say I am an astronaut but just to do it. I don't consider myself rich but if prices ever got down to $100k I would seriously consider it. Not something I could do more than once but a once in a lifetime experience? Why not.
Saying I want to go orbital only is dubious. Sure that would be great, but given Dragon 2 is $288M a flight (NASA price) that is out of the price range for 99.9% of people who might be interested and could pay $1M. Sure if an orbital flight was $100k I would gladly do that instead but pretty sure that isn't happening in my lifetime and maybe not this century.
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You can also get zero g conditions on a Pirate Ship ride at an amusement park - or a glider at ~3000ft. Both are a lot cheaper. But it is difficult to make the false claim "look we're in space because it is zero g"!
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The original craft (and mothership) were built pretty much as experimental aircraft. They had serious issues with wear and tear - the pylon holding the spaceplane to the mother ship would start cracking up after a few flights.
So all of that need to be re-engineered into a long term solution.
They also had enormous trouble with propulsion. It turned out that hybrid rockets (which were picked by a non-rocket expert) are neither simple nor easily scalable. The bodged a solution that worked but cost a lot in performance and weight for the fixes. So that needed to be redone.
So they needed a new mothership, a new space place and a new rocket motor. Essentially everything.
The spaceplane is extremely manual to fly. Not sure if they are changing this, though.
So they need another development program, in effect. Their costs are very high and they've burnt through a big pile of cash.
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Can someone buy the New Shepard capsule designs from BO and continue that business ?
If there are customers, and no design costs to amortize, maybe $2M or $3M will break even ?
If the custom reusable rocket itself is too expensive to service, offer people a thrill ride with reliable non-NG solids ?
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the NG design, and it's double-proven to be safe, so I'm curious whether there's still a sustainable path there for science experiments that don't fit a sounding rocket, mixed with tourists.
If there are customers, and no design costs to amortize, maybe $2M or $3M will break even ?
If the custom reusable rocket itself is too expensive to service, offer people a thrill ride with reliable non-NG solids ?
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the NG design, and it's double-proven to be safe, so I'm curious whether there's still a sustainable path there for science experiments that don't fit a sounding rocket, mixed with tourists.
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I doubt Blue has any interest in selling. To be clear though while NS is likely dead officially it is just paused for 2 years to bolster Artemis program projects. It is possible it comes back eventually either in current form or an improved model with the lessons learned from NS1.
No. Just no.
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They can't. The technology - the feathering mechanism and the lack of a heat shield - really doesn't go with the point to point trajectories.
In addition, you'd want ground launch for point to point, probably.
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Because that wouldn’t raise them any money? They don’t own the stock.
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Worse than that, a million dollars waiting to be spent and you have run out of everything else to spend it on. (Or really want to touch space.)
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I never understood sub-orbital flight. If I want to go to space, I would want to go to space, which in my mind is orbit. Maybe 3 to 10 orbits of Earth?
Similar to when I went skydiving. I didn't want a low level static line jump. I wanted to experience free fall from above 12,000 feet. It was a tandem jump but it didn't matter to me.
A fully reusable rocket I believe will eventually make the idea of a short stay orbital flight much more reasonable. I believe a 3rd stage, shuttle style glider type system to land the human crew would make much more sense over a capsule splash down. De-orbit the 2nd stage and have the glider detach and land like a plane. Charge $5 million each and have 10 passengers. $50 million per flight and have a cost around $25 million per flight. Fly every week ~50 flights a year. That is $1.25 billion in profits a year.
The more the hardware can get re-used the more proitable it becomes. There are almost 30,000 people worth $100 million in the world. Finding 500 to spend $5 million a year shouldn't be difficult.
Similar to when I went skydiving. I didn't want a low level static line jump. I wanted to experience free fall from above 12,000 feet. It was a tandem jump but it didn't matter to me.
A fully reusable rocket I believe will eventually make the idea of a short stay orbital flight much more reasonable. I believe a 3rd stage, shuttle style glider type system to land the human crew would make much more sense over a capsule splash down. De-orbit the 2nd stage and have the glider detach and land like a plane. Charge $5 million each and have 10 passengers. $50 million per flight and have a cost around $25 million per flight. Fly every week ~50 flights a year. That is $1.25 billion in profits a year.
The more the hardware can get re-used the more proitable it becomes. There are almost 30,000 people worth $100 million in the world. Finding 500 to spend $5 million a year shouldn't be difficult.
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They've stated that, but, among other things, point-to-point would require vastly more velocity than their system can achieve and faster reentry.
To fix that would require a heat shield, new propulsion systems and (probably) ditching feathering reentry.
Which would mean a whole new system that doesn't look like this one.
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Virgin Galactic somehow outlasted both Virgin Orbit and New Shepard, despite the latter two being objectively better than Virgin Galactic. (Not that they were necessarily good, but "better than Virgin Galactic" isn't a high bar.)
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I love how "systems integration" is being used to say, "we still have to put in a fucking FLOOR, let alone seats, insulation, avionic, rocket motor, guidance ssytem, flight control system, pressurization checks, air supplies...
The fucking thing is just a shell. Nothing inside. It's not hard to tell. You can see through the gaping holes in it (windows eventually? Who knows?). There' s literally nothing in there.
This is a publicly traded company. It is LIKELY on the verge of bankruptcy. They need investment cash to keep going, and that is drying up like the Amazon basin (among other places). So parading a mockup that is touted to be more than it's possibly able to become without a fresh infusion of cash seems a fuckton more likely for this publicity stunt than anything like "Ho hum, this is just us on a typical day producing another space vehicle, so invest! We're going places!"
Yeah, straight to Chapter 7.
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I pass by the Mesa facility pretty regularly, and always wonder what's going on with Virgin. Guess I got my answer
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Why would it require those things?
This is one analysis I found of the point-to-point plans:
https://www.illdefined.space/focus-on-virgin-galactics-wild-ride/
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Your analysis said the same thing. It would require extensive modification to both the spacecraft and
point to point requires substantially more deltav which would require vastly more propellant mass which would mean a much larger vehicle, which would change just about everything, which would probably require a new carrier aircraft to lift it.
It is the same reason an ICBM is bigger than a short range ballistic missile.
To reach space (100km) straight up requires about 1.4 km/s of dV. Spacecraft two obviously has less as they can't reach 100km/s so lets guesstimate 1000 m/s. Suborbital from New York to London would require >5 km/s. LA to Hong Kong closer to 9 km/s.
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It's not the same thing though. The article I linked to talked about the complications around additional mass for travelling longer distances, while @Malmesbury claimed that it'd need "vastly more velocity," and the complications that would entail.
It seems like for point-to-point, their craft wouldn't have to necessarily go faster or higher, just travel longer at the altitude it currently reaches. That wouldn't need a heat shield like Malmesbury claimed.
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That is the reason for the mass. The further you want to go the more deltaV it requires. It also means the hotter you would come back in on the other end.
To reach space straight up and down requires 1.4 km/s. We know this spacecraft has less than that because it can't even reach 100 km up. Flying New York to London would require > 5 km/s of dV.
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Are you saying it's a requirement of this type of ship to go higher and faster in order to go further around the globe? There's no option of a "cruising height" it could stick at to transverse the globe more without going higher?
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Yes. That is how suborbital trajectories work. To go further requires more deltaV. Even out of the atmosphere gravity is still slowing your vertical velocity so your altitude will rise peak (apogee) and then decline. That determines how long you can fly. The horizontal component determines how far. To go further requires flying long which means you need to go faster in order to go higher.
Eventually it would require so much deltaV that you can go orbital. It is why both US and Soviet earliest orbital launch vehicles were slight modification of ultra long range ballistic missiles (i.e. Juno-I and R-7). We started from v-2 (yeah the nazi one) which had about 2 km/s of dV enough to travel horizontally about 300 km and kept getting bigger and bigger meaning more dV which meant nukes could be thrown further and further until just a bit more velocity meant you could go into orbit.
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Are you thinking just about rockets though? Does a suborbital plane have to work that way?
I found this paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576509004767
I'm talking about something that "translates the vehicle horizontally" a further distance at the current height it reaches.
Again, I realize that this would take more propulsion, and thus more fuel, etc. , but not necessarily faster velocities.
I found an article that I believe is discussing what I'm talking about, and talks about the pitfalls:
Again, it's arguing staying at suborbital height for a longer time. Yes the delta-V increases (to 80% of orbital), but that's due to having to maintain height and velocity, not going higher or faster. Still, it introduces an interesting complication of heat buildup staying at the sub-orbital altitudes for longer making it similar to orbital re-entry.
Also, this image:
From this article:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...Space_Tourism_to_Commercial_Suborbital_Travel
That looks different than the more uniform loops of almost straight up-then-straight down of sub-orbital rockets, or even of the path Virgin Galactic uses now:
https://maxpolyakov.com/the-future-of-commercial-space-travel-part-1-suborbital-and-rocket-tours/
An interesting wrinkle is the concept that the longer sub-orbital plane flights wouldn't have such a steep AOA for either accent or descent. The point wouldn't be to get to "space" as fast as possible, or provide a period of "zero g," but to go farther at comfortable levels of acceleration for passengers.
So I can see where the argument is that "the delta-V is about the same" as for a rocket or other spaceplane going higher and faster to travel the same distance, but it looks like you don't have to go higher and faster to go a further distance.
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Yes the more propellant is for more velocity. That is how suborbital trajectories work. More propellant allows you to go faster which means it will take longer for you to fall back to the surface and during that time you can go further.
No it does not say that. You maintain suborbital flight longer ... by GOING FASTER.
There is no such thing as suborbital ALTITUDE. You can go 5,000 km up and still be suborbital. In fact to test ballistic missiles without flying over other people's countries (and they tend to dislike that) this is often done. You fly a near vertical trajectory see how high you go and then can compute how far you could have gone with a 45 degree launch angle.
Suborbital vs orbital is about velocity not altitude. Going to orbit means going fast not going high. Most people visualize the high part but really is 100 km that far away. Getting to orbit is hard because of the 9km to 10 km/s it takes to get the required level of fast to stay up there (7.3 km/s plus losses).
At one extreme of suborbital spaceflight you need a mere 1.4 km/s of dV. That allows you to go straight up 100 km and straight back down using a near vertical launch angle. The reason you don't need a heat shield isn't because it is suborbital it is because it is relatively slow. At the other extreme is being just shy of orbital velocity (peak velocity of 7.2 km/s after fighting drag and gravity losses) which would allow you to go 5 to 10km on an optimized trajectory. However despite being suborbital being just shy of orbital velocities (7.3 km/s) means the thermal impact is very similar to orbital re-entry.
Correct and that requires a high higher velocity. There is no magic go further with less velocity using suborbital/ballistic flight. Velocity and horizontal distance are linked. The other aspect is the launch angle or theta (what you call angle of attack) but 45 degrees is ideal for maximizing range beyond that to go further requires going faster.
burnout velocity vs horizontal distance at 45 degree launch angle
1 km/s 115 km
2 km/s 423 km
3 km/s 932 km
4 km/s 1,650 km
5 km/s 2,560 km
7 km/s 5,434 km
Note these numbers don't account for gravity decreasing the further you get from the Earth (too lazy for that). On the low end the impact is minimal but on the high end it is very significant so feel free to increase the high end numbers by 50%. I think it is clear though that to go further you have to go faster and to go a lot further you have to go a lot faster.
Yes you do (to a first order simplification). Yes there are other factors like drag and gravity losses, the reduced impact of gravity at extreme apogees, and lifting bodies but in general you must go faster to go further.
From your own reference
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