Virgin Galactic: Branson blasts off into the markets
Get ready for the next chapter in space history, said Maureen Farrell in The Wall Street Journal. Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture, is “preparing for lift-off as a publicly traded company”. The outfit, founded by Branson in 2004, will list its shares later this year as part of a merger deal with Social Capital Hedosophia – a “special-purpose acquisition company” (SPAC), created by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, which will invest $800m for a 49% stake.
Galactic is the first company of its type to float on the market, said Ryan Browne on
CNBC.com – a feather in the cap for Branson, “currently locked in a tense space race” with billionaire rivals Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their respective SpaceX and Blue Origin ventures. A seasoned Silicon Valley investor, Palihapitiya stepped in when Branson suspended talks to secure $1bn in Saudi cash last year in the wake of the murder of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Virgin Galactic has so far sold 600 tickets to aspiring astronauts, “raking in $80m” in the process. It enjoyed a big breakthrough in February when the company’s VSS Unity ship carried three astronauts and “a test passenger to the edge of space for the first time”.
There have been many setbacks, though, said Dianne Apen-Sadler in the Daily Mail. A previous vessel, SpaceShipTwo, suffered a fatal crash in 2014 that killed one pilot and seriously injured another. And the project has been beset by delays. Still, according to Branson, the dog days are over: “Great progress… means we are on track for our beautiful spaceship to begin commercial service,” he said this week. By opening up space “to more investors [we can] open space to thousands of new astronauts”. Buckle up: the billionaire space race really is on.