Virgin Galactic has just reopened ticket sales for people who want to cruise to the edge of space. For $450 000 which is R6 741 211 per seat, customers can expect a ninety-minute joyride in an air-launched rocket. A deposit of $150 000 is required with the full amount due before the date of the flight.
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As reported by CNN Business, from the first round of ticket sales, the company founded by Sir Richard Branson already has about six hundred reservations which were priced at $200 000 to $250 000 per seat. Virgin Galactic will only start commercial operations once exactly 1000 tickets are sold.
In July 2021 the company seemed like they were in a position to start commercial operations fairly soon when Sir Richard Branson travelled to the edge of space on 11 July 2021. However, a report from the New Yorker stated that a warning light in the cock pit went off when the craft, travelling at twice the speed of sound veered off course. It warned that the nose of the ship was not vertical enough and that the flight path was too shallow. They risked an emergency landing in the desert of New Mexico if the problem was not fixed in time. The craft also travelled out of its designated airspace for a total of 41 seconds which resulted in all flights being grounded by The Federal Aviation Administration pending a review. Virgin Galactic was given the all-clear in September.
Riding in rockets is very dangerous and according to the New Yorker 1.4% of Russian, Soviet, and American crewed missions to space have resulted in fatalities. Commercial space companies such as Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin have a responsibility to lessen that percentage. Branson confirmed this by saying that ‘A private program can’t afford to lose anybody.’
As a result of the new ticket sales, Virgin Galactic’s stock has gone up by 32% as of this month after taking a hammering last year due to the delayed beginning of commercial rocket launches to the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic’s main competitor at the moment is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. They have already launched three crewed missions for paying customers and celebrities which were all a success. The ticket pricing for these flights has not been disclosed by Blue Origin as of yet.
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