Virgin Galactic finally gets its first paying customers to edge of space Virgin Galactic today sent six people to the edge of space in its first-ever commercial flight. The mission, dubbed Galactic 01, took off at 0830 MT (1430 UTC) from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Onboard the VSS Unity spacecraft were a Virgin Galactic pilot, commander, and astronaut instructor, and the space biz's first …
Kinda curious myself but don't think it's super-relevant, they sure aren't paying the trip out of pocket... And I must say, as an Italian taxpayer I sure am glad that my money went towards giving those three a joyride so they can brag about being "astronauts" with their peers. /s
VG did their IPO via a SPAC when fools were still throwing money into space (April 2020). They raised $720M so should be good for a few more years. I think by that time there will be a fresh set of fools ready to throw more money into space. Starship should be putting Starlinks into orbit regularly but not launching people. SpaceX will still be private company so not accessible to retail investors. VG will confuse the number of people showing interest or making a reservation with the number of firm sales again to cash in on the the interest in space generated by Starship, Neutron, and possibly New Glenn. As long as they do not do too many launches (cost is greater than price), VG should still be trading in 2028. Stretching things out beyond 2030 would require a cost effective rocket plane from a company whose principle skill is with investor relations. Companies more skilled at rocket science than finance die more quickly.
"a little premature to think it's going to be a paradigm shift. A successful launch would be nice."
Given SpaceX's history it would be a brave person to bet against them getting Starship to work (stupid bloody name for a rocket).
The big question, and the only real disappointment from the last test, is the performance of the heat shield.
As Musk's lawyers are so fond of saying, no reasonable person would consider Musk's tweets a source of factual information.
The launch industry is already disrupted. Launches used to be affordable. ULA would look at your budget and expenses and decide what you could afford. Ariane V, Atlas V and Delta IV all lost their commercial launches to Falcon 9. The price of Soyuz got slashed hard even before Russia started stealing payloads. Sanctions limit who can launch from China and cadence limit launching from India. Ariane VI and Vulcan had no business case until it was clear New Glenn could not launch enough of Kuiper before the license expires. The bulk of the small launch market has been taken by ride shares on Falcon 9. These are not Musk Tweets, but statements and price lists from competitors.
Full reuse is going to take time, so the next cost reductions comes from different directions. The price of launch is already low compared to the cost of most payloads. The second disruption is in progress from bolt-ons to Starlink satellites (Starshield). Customers can already take advantage of the mass production costs of Starlink's power, propulsion, space communications and ground communications. Prices for Starship are already available: if it can launch on a Falcon 9 then that is the price and the customer can switch to Starship when it becomes available otherwise the price matches Falcon heavy. Starship provides about 10x the payload mass of Falcon 9. That hits one of the big costs of satellites: shaving every possible kilogram of the mass to fit within the limits of the launch vehicle. Initially only one customer is ready to take advantage of the extra payload mass: Starlink, but customers will be able to take advantage of that with bolt-ons.
According to early Musk tweets, the price of a Falcon 9 launch was going to be $27M. The actual price today is $67M. Some of that is inflation. The rest can be blamed on lack of competition. Reducing the launch price will not bring enough extra launches to SpaceX to increase profits. Again according to Musk, the incremental cost of Falcon 9 launches was $15M in 2020. More credible sources estimate $18M to $20M. SpaceX could drop their price to $27M (with or without adding inflation) and still make a profit.
Musk was good at pushing up share prices. Tesla has grown enormously because people bought shares at far above their possible value - and many people still do. I used to find Musk tweets grating but my expectations have dropped off a cliff since then. Musk's lawyers convinced me to get SpaceX facts from other sources long ago.
Flocke: The launch industry is already disrupted. Launches used to be affordable
Cow: Says who ? Musk has received billions in direct grants from the US tax payer.
Its like saying Beardy Branson's flights only cost $450k,... theres only one problem, the tax payers of this base spent $300M+, so please tell me how much does a seat actually cost ?
So you think that an airline could compete if it threw away each plane after a single flight?
The incremental cost of a starship launch will be disruptive - the ability to throw a substantial payload to anywhere in the solar system will change how we do research in the solar system.
What I don't buy is the point to point suborbital transport model - I can't imagine there are nearly enough people who need to get from, for example, London to Sydney in that short a time to make it a sustainable model - but then I haven't seen the passenger density yet.
The risks involved in the landing just don't make sense for something as trivial as on planet transport... those risks are far more reasonable when looking at interplanetary hops.
john: So you think that an airline could compete if it threw away each plane after a single flight?
cow: The only problem is you are being completely dishonest in sharing the cost of each flight.
The flights are cheaper because the US tax payer is paying billions for development for starters. Each and every flight is subsidized by the tax payer. No tax payer no flying.
If i had a shop i could give away tvs for $1 if i got them for free, where free means the government pays for them.
The flights are cheaper because the technology for reusing rockets has been developed.
Yes SpaceX is in receipt of US government contracts, so is Boeing...
You seem to be confused about what those contracts are for, and how much SpaceX charges compared with other launch providers - they charge 60% of what boeing or roscosmos do for their seats, and only one of those has launched.
"How exactly does one build one of those on the Moon or Mars so you can re-use starship ?"
The same way one builds them on the Earth; Navvies, shovels, picks and big, yellow digger machines. One does not need a degree in Media Studies to be employed on Mars,
the Moon, Mercury or even Titan to ask: "Do you want chips with that?"
Sure, if the vehicles can *only* lift off from a specially-prepared runway, even under lower than Terran gravity, the first few will need to load up on Navvies and shovels then
wait around for a while but that's just Administration, engineeering and accounting. It sure isn't rocket surgery.
Oh, the diggers are vastly too big to be taken up in one piece so would probably need a few "Starships" each and a guy with a screwdriver set. Or hex wrenches. Maybe both.
But again that's just organisational stuff. Hell, given a set of poorly-copied diagrams, *I* could maybe fix them together. Eventually.
If it can be built in Bognor, it can be replicated on the coast of a Titanian lake. The latter may even be cheaper: no Union rates and no Health-and-Safety.
For starters John learn to quote, by putting names before each comment. In case you havent figured it out after a few rounds of replies your system not using names doesnt work.
cow: How exactly does one build one of those on the Moon or Mars so you can re-use starship ?"
john: The same way one builds them on the Earth; Navvies, shovels, picks and big, yellow digger machines. One does not need a degree in Media Studies to be employed on Mars,
cow: How exactly do you send up that heavy yellow digger machines to the Moon or Mars ?
Just how much does starbase launch site weigh here on earth and how much would it cost to send all that and the yellow digger and other equipment to reconstruct it ?
How many 100s or 1000s of trips to Mars or Moon is that ?
Did you even think this thru before answering ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOetjCCNZ3w
SpaceX Drops Bombshell Upgrade Announcement: Can it really be that good?
Marcus House....
Mentions hundreds of truck loads of concrete working one day for the new pad they are building ?
How much will it cost to send ONE DAY'S equvialent amount of concrete and machinary to mars ? Given theres no pad that means you need to send one time use rockets to send all those truck loads of stuff just to build the pad.
Yeah we can stand an mock but someone with money has to be the first to do anything and pay a premium to be first doing it. The first cars and first planes were all playthings of the wealthy and now we all benefit, so I guess we should just watch rich people playing with their new toys and wait our turn when it's down to £50 a pop for a trip to the moon for the day!
I'm watching the UK ONS Consumer Price Basket of Goods - waiting for when Helicopter Hire gets added to it - it would appear demand has increased since the current incumbent moved into No. 10 Downing St
A day trip to the Moon is not physically impossible but you would be looking for some big leaps in technology like nuclear propulsion, a really impressive heat shield and spending only a few minutes at the destination. About three days to get there and three more to get back is more reasonable. If you are spending that much time on the journey then you would want to spend several days at the destination. Starship would have to meet all its most generous targets to get the marginal cost under $1M: 1 Crew + 4x Tanker launches at $10M each for 50 people (there is room for more but multimillionaires are not flying cattle class for a week). Even that requires a luxury hotel on the Moon with a really big LOX production plant and regular trips so the Crew Starship exchanges new tourists for old and goes straight back to Earth without waiting in orbit and not earning money. Paying back the investment on that infrastructure would send the ticket price well over the marginal cost.
When they are offering trips off of this planet, I'd buy one if they included a one-way option.
Sure, after fifty, sixty years or so one might get a little nostalgic for the "cool, green hills of Earth" but that's what videos are for.
A hint to the billionaires: no taxes on Luna. Set up your own "Luna City" and you could have extremely lax financial conditions. Also no import tarrifs.
Second hint: *maybe* low gravity allows for a longer life. Gravity is stressful. Also painfull if you forget it's there.
Why would anyone want to goto the Moon or Mars ?
Are you aware of how shit both are ?
You are literally living in an atmosphere in the your space craft filled with shit and vomit, as a large minority of people get sick on a regular basis in space. Everybody gets sick there. WHy wuld you want to spend years wearing a nappy and living in such conditions ?
Don't know. People used to set off on a sea voyage without guarantee of arrival, with awful supplies of food and water, poor sanitary conditions and squalid accommodation.
Even when they reached their destination they faced harsh conditions and a fight to survive.
Later people set off across a continent in wagon trains, not all made it over the final mountain range.
But they eventually worked it out. There must have been some motivation to do it,
One day things might become so bad here on the old planet that a voyage across the galaxy to a new planet where only future generations arrive might seem attractive.
Travelling on the old sailing ships is paradise compared to a space trip to Mars.
For starters a trip across the atlantic is roughly a month or two, and to Australia its lets say 6 months. You also get fresh air and actual space if you walk on deck and if you are travelling to Australia there are also a few stops along the way.
Mars on the other hand its a prison for life, no fresh air, you cant even actually run more than 2 or 3 steps....now tell me thats better than an old sailing ship.
Did Virgin Galactic ever explain why their official YouTube feed was almost 2 minutes behind real time, as opposed to (for example) the guys from NSF who happened to be onsite also, and were showing much the same footage without a delay?
(Cue Virgin Broadband gags in 3... 2... 1...)
How long until Elon punts people into orbit for a bit of circle work (or a cage fight) on a used Falcon and Dragon capsule just for shits and giggles, they’re likely fully depreciated now and cheap (subjective obviously).
Edit.. seems it’s still $everal million$. Perhaps he could write the orbital cage fight off as a tax deduction
Nearly two decades developing and testing this craft an investor may reasonably ask why not clone these existing craft and increase the launch cadence to every few weeks?
No doubt there is some reason why this will not fly but VG will have to sell their strategy before the money dries up.
Vomit comet rides are about $5000 for 15x 30 seconds of zero-G. There may be some experiments that need more than a reduced gravity aircraft but do not require going all the way to orbit. I think this flight really demonstrated exceptional ability at writing research grant applications.
I seem to remember - but am far too lazy to Wiki - a MIG joyride for tourists that took one to "the edge of space" allowing for a period of deep emesis and possibly even
a few minutes driving the bus. It may even still be going. South Africa, maybe?
Sir Dick's effort may be slightly less cramped but is it really any *better*?
The latter. The most amazing thing about "Behind the Curve," the documentary about flat earthers, was watching them come up with startlingly subtle and clever experiments to measure the curvature of the earth, then shrugging and discarding them as "faulty" when they showed curvature.
About 6 minutes compared to 25 seconds. Although the vomit comet does 40 or more wiggles so the total zero-g time is actually larger. So there seems to be a relatively small niche of experiments that need continuous zero-g for more than 30 seconds but not more than 6 minutes. Given that vomit comets have been run on a variety of different regular production planes, it's presumably far cheaper to fly on one of those than with Virgin (insert joke about Virgin Atlantic here).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
