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Virgin Galactic plans to run its first human test flight from Spaceport America between November 19 and 23, according to a company press release.
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Assuming the flight is successful, Virgin will be one step closer to flying its billionaire founder, Richard Branson, past the edge of space.
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Following Branson’s successful flight, the company says it will resume selling tickets aboard its luxe VSS Unity spaceship.
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Virgin Galactic expects to launch its a human mission from Spaceport America between November 19 and 23, according to a press release issued by the company on Thursday.
The flight wouldn’t be Virgin Galactic’s first with crew: The company has twice launched employees on up-and-down suborbital flights, in December 2018 and in February 2019, from its test facility in California’s Mojave Desert.
The planned November flight would be the first from its New Mexico headquarters, to which it moved in May 2019 after years of delays. But the company has already completed several crewed test flights of its VSS Unity spaceship.
Should the November test flight succeed, Virgin Galactic will be one step closer to its goal of ferrying well-heeled passengers to and from Spaceport America on its SpaceShipTwo model, a luxurious vehicle with reclining seats, a cleverly lit cabin, and circular passenger windows on the sides and ceiling.
The company has already sold at least 600 tickets for prices ranging from $200,000 to $250,000; an additional 900 people have paid $1,000 “One Small Step” deposits to secure tickets in the future, according to the company’s third-quarter financial results (released Thursday). Passenger flights would carry up to six passengers and two pilots each.
Before Virgin Galactic flies any paying passengers, though, company founder and billionaire Richard Branson will take the ship for a spin himself.
Virgin Galactic didn’t release timing for Branson’s flight, but noted for those who plunked down a $1,000 deposit, the company is “[r]eopening ticket sales in 2021 after Sir Richard Branson’s flight.”
Once passenger flights do start, SpaceShipTwo vehicles will ferry passengers into suborbital space — unofficially, about 62 miles in altitude — and back to Earth. Such flights would provide several minutes of weightlessness and stunning views of the planet and the stars.
November’s flight will also carry NASA science experiments
In addition to people, VSS Unity’s planned test flight will carry “revenue-generating payloads” for NASA, the company announced, likely in the form of science experiments.
The arrangement is part of a partnership between Virgin Galactic and NASA, where the company has agreed to fly the agency’s astronauts and payloads on suborbital missions.
Such flights would give suborbital astronauts a brief taste of spaceflight and help them acclimate to the experience before going on longer missions. They will also permit scientists to perform experiments that require a few minutes of microgravity, without having to spend the energy and money to take them all the way to orbit. Suborbital flights can also provide a stabler, longer-lasting microgravity environment than parabolic airplane flights (also know as “vomit comets”) can offer.
The first researcher scheduled to fly is Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and leader of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, according to a SwRI press release.
However, Stern won’t be on the upcoming test flight. “I expect our first flight will be in 2022,” he told Business Insider in an email.
Virgin Galactic, which Branson founded in 2004, announced the flight along with some less-rosy financial news from its third quarter: It lost $77 million, an even bigger hit from $63 million lost in the second quarter of 2020.
In a conference call on Thursday, newly minted CEO Michael Colglazier said that the pandemic had made spaceship-building far less cost-efficient, a partial explanation for the increased losses. Virgin Galactic also hopes to resurrect hypersonic passenger travel with the help of Rolls-Royce, which once manufactured Concorde jet engines.
Virgin Orbit, a sister company to Virgin Galactic that aims to fly small satellites to orbit, has also been losing money, though at a faster rate since Branson founded it in 2017. As Business Insider previously reported, it has spent about $1 billion on development and has yet to successfully deliver a payload to space.
That might not sound extravagant for a rocket company, but Rocket Lab, a competing small-launch company based in New Zealand, has already sent rockets into orbit and has only spent about $180 million on development costs. In mid-November, that company hopes to demonstrate its first SpaceX-like rocket-booster recovery.
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