Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 (File)
Washington:
Virgin Galactic has sold nearly 100 tickets since its founder Richard Branson flew into space over the summer, with commercial service expected to begin by the end of 2022, the company said in its financial results on Monday.
The current price of the fare is $450,000 per seat, which is higher than the $200,000- $250,000 paid by approximately 600 customers from 2005 to 2014.
In total, the company has sold 700 tickets so far, a spokesman told AFP.
“We are entering a period of growth in our fleet with a clear roadmap to enhance the durability, reliability and predictability of our vehicles in preparation for commercial service next year,” CEO Michael Colaglier said in a statement.
“Demand for space travel is strong, and we are selling seats ahead at the pace we had planned.”
Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic is trying to capitalize on the success of a high-profile test mission in July, in which Branson defeated Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos in his billionaire space race in just a few days.
But since then the company, which took off from Spaceport America in the desert of New Mexico, has faced setbacks.
It was briefly grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after an investigative report in the New Yorker found that its spacecraft experienced a close call during its July flight and dropped below its designated airspace. Gave.
The FAA criticized Virgin Galactic for failing to communicate the deviation.
In October, Virgin said it was postponing a mission with members of the Italian Air Force for several months, after discovering problems with the strength of the material in its vehicles.
At present it is in the process of augmenting its vehicles.
Unlike Blue Origin and SpaceX, its main competitor in the nascent space tourism sector, Virgin Galactic deploys a giant carrier aircraft that takes off horizontally, achieves high altitudes, and shoots down a rocket-powered spacecraft. Which then ascends into space.
As a publicly traded company, Virgin Galactic also needs to be more transparent about its finances.
The cost of tickets on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket, capable of leaping about ten minutes into space and back, is unknown, but likely to be significantly higher.
An online auction for the first seat sold for $28 million, but the winner deferred her flight.
The seats in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which launches atop a giant Falcon 9 rocket and is contracted by NASA to ferry astronauts to the ISS, are likely to run into the millions of dollars.
In September, Elon Musk’s company took four private tourists on a three-day orbital mission sponsored by online payments billionaire Jared Isaacman.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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