Virgin Galactic assembly plant to build 6 spaceships per year
Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic may have fallen behind fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, but the company is geared up to start cranking out a fleet of spaceplanes that have the potential to play catchup.
Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc., which was founded by Branson, announced Thursday it signed a long-term lease for a new assembly manufacturing planet in Mesa, Arizona, further cementing its presence in the southwest U.S.
The plant will be to build the company’s next-generation Delta class spaceships, expected to be fully operational late 2023, with the first spacecraft ready for test flights in 2025, according to a press release.
Private astronaut flights could then come in 2026, and the facility is expected to crank out up to six spacecraft a year.
The Delta class is designed for weekly flights as part of Virgin’s goal to provide 400 flights per year from its New Mexico launch site Spaceport America.
“Our spaceship final assembly factory is key to accelerating the production of our Delta fleet, enabling a rapid increase in flight capacity that will drive our revenue growth,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said. “We’re thrilled to expand into the greater Phoenix area which is home to outstanding aerospace talent — and we look forward to growing our team and fleet at our new facility.”
Virgin’s current spacecraft class, SpaceShipTwo, last flew the VSS Unity with Branson as a passenger back in July 2021, launching him past what Virgin deems space, citing the threshold set by the U.S. Air Force: rocketing to an altitude of 50 miles above the Earth.
His flight usurped Bezos’ first passenger flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which flies even farther, past the Karman line, an internationally accepted threshold for space, which is 100 km, or 62 miles above the surface of the Earth.
Virgin Galactic has more than 700 people lined up to fly on future flights, but does not expect to get back to launches until at least late 2022. Reservations for those flights began more than a decade ago when it was testing out its first SpaceShipTwo, which suffered a fatal crash and delayed the program for years. The newly designed SpaceShipTwo has to date achieved Virgin’s altitude goal four times.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has continued New Shepard flights having launched five times since July 2021 with a goal of launching another four before the end of the year.
Prices for Blue Origin flights have not been advertised while Virgin Galactic flight reservations were listed at $450,000 per person when it reopened reservations in February.