24 Facts About Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.

Virgin Galactic is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.

In February 2022, Virgin Galactic announced that it opens ticket sales to the public.

Virgin Galactic had sold tickets before February 2022 to clients that had paid deposits earlier or otherwise "were on a list"; as of November 2021 the company had about 700 customers .

Virgin Galactic aims to have about 3 launches per month sometime in 2023.

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Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who had previously founded the Virgin Group and the Virgin Atlantic airline, and who had a long personal history of balloon and surface record-breaking activities.

Virgin Galactic announced in June 2014 that they were in talks with Google about the injection of capital to fund both development and operations.

The New Mexico government has invested approaching $200m in the Spaceport America facility, for which Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant; other commercial space companies use the site.

Virgin Galactic raised $450 million through a SPAC merger listing, and company's market value after listing was more than $2.

In February 2014, cracks in WhiteKnightTwo, where the spars connect with the fuselage, were discovered during an inspection conducted after Virgin Galactic took possession of the aircraft from builder Scaled Composites.

In November 2014, Branson and Virgin Galactic came under criticism for their attempts to distance the company from the disaster by referring to the test pilots as Scaled Composites employees.

However, despite CRM issues being cited as a likely contributing cause, Virgin Galactic confirmed that it would not modify the cockpit display system.

On 14 October 2021, Virgin Galactic announced that an upgrade program for Unity and Eve would begin, delaying future commercial flights to mid 2022.

In February 2007, Virgin Galactic announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA to explore the potential for collaboration, but, to date, this has produced only a relatively small contract in 2011 of up to $4.

On 24 January 2019, Virgin Galactic announced a partnership with Under Armour for the fabrication of space suits for passengers and pilots of SpaceShipTwo.

On 23 May 2014, Virgin Galactic announced that they had abandoned use of the Sierra Nevada Corporation nitrous-oxide-rubber motor for SpaceShipTwo; on 24 July 2014, SNC confirmed that they had abandoned use of this motor for its Dream Chaser space shuttle.

An international architectural competition for the design of Virgin Galactic's operating base, Spaceport America in New Mexico, saw the contract awarded to URS and Foster + Partners architects.

LauncherOne is an orbital launch vehicle that Virgin Galactic had begun working on by late 2008, with the technical specifications defined in some detail in late 2009.

Virgin Galactic reported in March 2015 that they were on schedule to begin test flights of LauncherOne with its Newton 3 engine by the end of 2016.

In March 2017, Virgin Galactic spun off its 200-member LauncherOne team into a new company called Virgin Orbit.

Virgin Galactic is not the only corporation pursuing suborbital spacecraft for tourism.

Now-defunct XCOR Aerospace had worked on rocket-powered aircraft during many of the years that Virgin Galactic had; XCOR's Lynx suborbital vehicle was under development for more than a decade, and its predecessor, the XCOR EZ-Rocket experimental rocket powered airplane did actually take flight, but the company closed its doors in 2017.

On 11 July 2021 Virgin Galactic became the first spaceflight company to independently launch a founder of the company into space, using the 50 mile high definition of space, having flown founder Richard Branson above the 50 mile mark on flight Unity 22.

Virgin Galactic has been certified by the FAA to provide commercial spaceflight travel, and its accounts report that over 600 commercial passengers have already signed up.