Virgin Galactic: to infinity and beyond?
At last, some “welcome relief” for Wall Street “after a turbulent period for flotations”, said James Sillars on Sky News. And a case of mission accomplished for Britain’s leading space cadet, Sir Richard Branson. Shares in his space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, rocketed 10% on their market debut in New York, valuing the outfit at around $2.4bn. The daredevil Sir Richard, who “attended the launch in a space suit”, beat rival space tycoons Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Elon Musk (SpaceX) to the market, via a timely merger with an existing cash shell backed by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. But he still faces “stiff competition” to win the race to complete a commercial space flight. Galactic hopes to be in the air by the middle of 2020.
“Despite the whizzy-looking planes”, Virgin Galactic is “quite a simple financial bet”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian: that multimillionaires would rather spend $250,000 on a 90-minute flight, 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, “than tootle around the Med on a floating gin palace”. When you consider that “a Philip Green-style cruiser” costs $500,000 a week to hire, “one can see how the numbers might stack up”. Galactic reckons just 0.1% of the global “high net worth” market would make the venture viable. Still, “a single mishap would ground the whole project”.
“A lot has to go right” to justify Virgin Galactic’s starry price-tag, agreed Lex in the Financial Times. Then again, if the company can “bring space tourism, like low-cost aviation, to the masses”, the potential prize is considerable. But adapting “hypersonic flight” to existing routes might prove to be an even better strategy. “London to New York in an hour would open the door to a far bigger market than sightseeing.”