Would-be space riders on a Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. spacecraft will now have to wait until at least mid-2023 for their suborbital flights.
The Tustin-based space tourism company (NYSE: SPCE) said earlier this month the company’s inaugural commercial flights are expected to launch sometime between April and June of next year.
An earlier delay had pushed them to the first three months of 2023 from the end of this year.
Virgin Galactic chalked up the latest postponement to “extended completion dates’’ for refurbishing the “mothership”—the twin fuselage plane called VMS Eve that carries the spaceship skyward.
Despite the delay on the start of space rides, “progress on our future fleet continues and many of the key elements of our roadmap are now in place to scale the business in a meaningful way,” CEO Michael Colglazier said in a quarterly earnings release on Aug. 3.
While “the short-term schedule slide is unfortunate,” the refurbishing team is working diligently and the company is taking a “long-term approach to managing the business,” the CEO told analysts in a conference call after the release.
The company’s market cap soared to $15 billion after it went public in 2019, but was closer to $2 billion as of last week. It relocated its headquarters from New Mexico to Tustin earlier this year; it also designs its spacecraft in its Orange County offices.
Lofty Goal
Back in the spring, Colglazier said the company plans to work up to about 400 space flights a year as it moves to its fourth-generation Delta class of spaceships, or an average of a little more than once a day.
Colglazier is an OC local and the former president of Anaheim’s Disneyland Resort from 2013 to 2018.
Virgin Galactic, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, says it has sold more than 800 tickets for the flights that cost $450,000 per ticket with a $150,000 deposit.
The company also said that Virtuoso Travel Network—a leading luxury travel association—has exclusive rights to sell a limited number of remaining tickets in the first group of 1,000.
Research Flyers
Colglazier said on the earnings call earlier this month that Virgin Galactic is allotting 100 tickets to research customers.
“We continuously monitor our supply chain for potential risk associated with the delivery of materials from our suppliers, which in turn could impact the schedule for completion of the enhancement period and the start of commercial service,” Virgin Galactic said in a regulatory filing.
The company posted a net loss of $111 million in the second quarter compared to a $94 million net loss in the same period a year ago.
Virgin Galactic had cash and cash equivalents of $1.1 billion as of the end of the second quarter.
The company last month announced selection of a Boeing subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, to build two new motherships, each designed to fly up to 200 launches per year. The first new mothership is planned to enter service in 2025.
The release of Virgin Galactic’s second-quarter financial results came the same day as its suborbital spaceflight rival, Blue Origin, flew its sixth crewed New Shepard flight. The company owned by Jeff Bezos has flown 31 people to date.
