No Further Investments in Virgin Galactic, Says Richard Branson (arstechnica.com) 11
Sir Richard Branson has ruled out putting more money into his lossmaking space travel company Virgin Galactic, saying his business empire "does not have the deepest pockets" any more. From a report: Virgin Galactic, which was founded by Branson in 2004, last month announced it was cutting jobs and suspending commercial flights for 18 months from next year, in a bid to preserve cash for the development of a larger plane that could carry passengers to the edge of space. The group has said it has enough funding to carry it through to 2026, when the bigger Delta vehicle is expected to enter service. But some analysts are expecting Galactic to ask investors for more money in about 2025.
Asked whether he would consider putting more cash into the business if needed, Branson told the Financial Times: "We don't have the deepest pockets after Covid, and Virgin Galactic has got $ 1 billion, or nearly. It should, I believe, have sufficient funds to do its job on its own." Branson said he was "still loving" the Virgin Galactic project and that it had "really proved itself and the technology" of commercial space flight. Galactic has just completed its sixth commercial flight in six months, with tickets starting at $450,000 a seat on its rocket-powered Unity space plane.
Asked whether he would consider putting more cash into the business if needed, Branson told the Financial Times: "We don't have the deepest pockets after Covid, and Virgin Galactic has got $ 1 billion, or nearly. It should, I believe, have sufficient funds to do its job on its own." Branson said he was "still loving" the Virgin Galactic project and that it had "really proved itself and the technology" of commercial space flight. Galactic has just completed its sixth commercial flight in six months, with tickets starting at $450,000 a seat on its rocket-powered Unity space plane.
Von Karman (Score:3)
Fuck off, if I can see atmospheric effects like noctilucent clouds above my head I am NOT in space. It should be called Virgin Mesosphere not Virgin Galactic. The atmosphere on Pluto is thinner than Earth’s atmosphere at the height Virgin MesophereShipTwo reaches.
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It's been a long time since I've heard that name. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics characterizing supersonic and hypersonic airflow. In 1944 he and others affiliated with Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n (And sadly, Slashdot can't properly display his name.)
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Aerodynamics, yeah. There's no aero in space; while even intergalactic medium is no complete vacuum, if you have any practical effects of the medium you're moving through you're not in space.
Von Karman's line is the max height where, according to his calculations, an aerodynamic lift based plane can fly. What it is not, is any meaningful definition of "end of atmosphere".
Political marketing bastards abuse pieces of his research for unrelated propaganda of success, that's all. This doesn't detract from vo
Competition is killing them (Score:3)
If you don't care about actually going to space, a seat on a Blue Origin flight will cost you about $200,000 â" $300,000 per person.
Virgin Galactic meanwhile costs you $450,000 per person.
The Virgin flight is a longer experience overall ( 2+ hours vs 11 minutes ), but most of that is just the plane ride - the amount of time weightless is roughly the same, 3-4 minutes.
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Those Blue Origin prices are about as accurate as the Cybertruck selling for $40K. Actual pricing is not known, but rumour is 7 figures.
The most memorable feature (Score:2)
The most interesting feature that comes to mind when I think about this venture is how he
1. Pretended to ride his bike to the launch,
2. Got up on stage and talked about riding his bike to the launch,
3. Was busted for actually taking a car in a motorcade
4. Delivered some gaslighting press to say that something must have been miscommunicated.
Whatever makes people like this proud of themselves, the need to lie about something like that is really lame and pathetic. The gaslighting is a sign of weakness, someone
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PeteB does some silly things, but the massive distinction here is that he actually rode his bike, even if it was a very short distance.
In Branson's case, the ride was done on a completely separate day and presented as though it had occurred on the day of launch.
Also PeteB wasn't doing a cross promotion with Trek for a special bike tied to the event.