Big flop in the space race

There was the usual Virgin group party atmosphere, complete with food trucks, bars and a silent disco as a large crowd gathered at Spaceport Cornwall in January to watch the first attempt to launch satellites into space from the UK.

Virgin Orbit’s customised 747 with a 24t rocket attached beneath a wing took off without a problem, and the crowd went wild when news came through that the rocket had detached successfully and the first-stage rocket had ignited without a hitch.

Sadly, the party came to an abrupt halt when the second-stage rocket failed due to what was later diagnosed as a faulty fuel filter, reaching a height of 112 miles instead of the intended 345 miles before falling back to earth.

This put the vehicle backed by Sir Richard Branson an awfully long way behind the conspicuously successful operations funded by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the billionaire space race, and ultimately it proved a failure from which the company was unable to recover.

Virgin Orbit was spun out of Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism group in 2017, and it went public in January last year via a special purpose acquisition company at a valuation of $3.7bn.

Now the group has announced that it is laying off 85% of its workforce after it failed to secure the meaningful funding it would need to carry on its mission.

It has announced that it will be ceasing operations for the foreseeable future, and unless it can find a white knight with considerable optimism and extremely deep pockets, it looks as though the dream is over.