Last lap for Virgin Galactic’s space planes?

On June 8, the VSS Unity will make its last lap at Spaceport America in New Mexico (United States). Virgin Galactic is preparing its next generation, which should start commercial flights in 2026. But the group will above all have to look for funds, because without income, it is a real race against time that begins.

Virgin Galactic teams are working to prepare a new flight of the VSS Unity. As always, it must be equipped with a new hybrid rocket engine, the latter being single-use. Then, there are tests on the ground as well as with the carrier aircraft, the VMS Eve, while other teams will be active in the cabin.

For its next parabola at an altitude of more than 80 kilometers (50 miles, the frontier, at least American, of space flights), the VSS Unity will embark a “research astronaut”, who will carry out several scientific experiments on behalf of Axiom Space , in addition to three more traditional tourists who came to cavort in front of the infinite black of the cosmos and the curvature of the Earth.

For this suborbital flight, the 12^e of the rocket plane, Virgin Galactic will embark its 30^e passenger. This is both a lot, because suborbital space tourism did not exist before 2021 (ironically, passengers were going into orbit before these smaller adventures at the frontier of space), and little, since Virgin Galactic s boasts a list of over 700 clients.

VSS Unity works well, but…

Most of these customers will have to wait, and wait some more. Indeed, the next flight of the VSS Unity will be its last. The company made this decision last year for economic reasons. Unity was assembled in 2014 and 2015, while Virgin Galactic was conducting flight tests with its previous prototype, the VSS Enterprise, which suffered a major accident and crash in October 2014.

It then took several years to get the program back on track and ensure greater flight safety (however, the spaceplane is fully piloted, it has no emergency ejection system). In 2018, it achieved its first truly suborbital parabola at an altitude of more than 80 kilometers. The one scheduled for June 8 is the 12th^e9 of which were made with passengers.

VSS Unity has also been the subject of several minor modification campaigns to allow it to fly more regularly. These campaigns take place once a month, according to Virgin Galactic, even if the device only maintained this cadence between April and November 2023. However, it was a real entry into commercial service! There remains a basic problem: even if Unity flies well, it is expensive for a company which is already losing a lot of money.

Stop stealing to save the furniture

If Virgin Galactic chooses to retire its iconic space plane, it is because the firm (based in California) is flying it at a loss. Parabolic flight revenues have not climbed more than a few million, while each quarter the group loses between $110 and $200 million. This abysmal bill is only the extension of a situation that has lasted for two decades.

But since the end of 2019, Virgin Galactic has entered the stock market and must therefore publish its accounts. Those responsible chose, at the time of the introduction as well as now, to hide behind promises of a large number of future flights with the next aircraft. Indeed, the business model consisted of using the VSS Unity and its successor, the VSS Imagine, for several years to carry out an increasing number of flights: several per month, then more than one per week to reach the break-even point. The documents shared with investors mentioned 66 passengers in 2020, almost 650 in 2021, and even more than 1,500 in 2023…

The feedback has not been very conclusive, Virgin Galactic is losing too much money at the moment by only flying once a month, and since last year, all work concerning the VSS Imagine has been in progress. break. It will probably never return to service or will be profoundly modified. The gap between promises and reality is such that investors have filed a complaint with the financial markets authority, accusing Virgin Galactic of having embellished its forecasts before its IPO.

The cash machine is broken

The Stock Market, moreover, was not the Eldorado we had hoped for. Richard Branson and his teams planned to use financial leverage to accelerate the development of the company, driven by its flights and the experience offered to its customers. However, not only were there very few lucky ones, but investors were not extremely patient.

Popular a few months after the IPO, the stock plunged into limbo on the NYSE, and the outlook is not good. The unit value of the shares is currently flirting with 1 dollar, which represents a danger for the company, because if the title remains 6 months below the dollar, it will be “delisted” and will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

This is a real slap in the face, which the group hopes to circumvent by proposing share consolidations to its shareholders. The decision will be made in the second quarter. Most advice to investors, however, recommends that they move on, because Virgin Galactic will not be able to generate significant revenues until at least 2026. This is very annoying for a company that only has $860 million in cash left. in its fund, and which currently pays out 113 million per quarter!

We hope that the Delta hovers

For Virgin Galactic, the hoped-for salvation is that of its new generation of space planes, called “Delta Class”. We currently know very little about their final design, even if several elements suggest that they will take many elements from the VSS Unity generation. The Delta Class aircraft will use feedback from the company’s flights to take off at a final expected rate of almost once a day.

Virgin Galactic would like to unveil the first one by the end of the year, then conduct flight tests in 2025 before entering commercial service in 2026. This schedule is ambitious, given the schedules Virgin Galactic is accustomed to. But even until then, the company should scale back, at least temporarily. There is no question of keeping teams doing nothing at Spaceport America, without tourists to welcome. Activities will be strengthened around the firm’s new production site in Arizona (it seems that this will soon be finished for the group installed on the old site in Mojave, California).

Hopes of (re)flight

However, all the imbroglios are not resolved regarding the activities of the Delta Class. The latter’s devices should benefit from the same carrier aircraft as Unity, the VMS Eve. And also its co-devices, which were to be produced by 2025. But ultimately, production will wait…

Virgin Galactic is in dispute with Boeing. The manufacturer carried out the pre-production study of these planes and is claiming an unpaid invoice of 26 million dollars! Certainly, we can wonder if the last flight of the VSS Unity this June 8 will be anything other than the swan song for Virgin Galactic in the face of all these difficulties… Even if we should not bury it too early, the firm still exists. the same since 2004. All that remains is to see if the famous new generation devices will succeed in the terrible challenge that will be imposed on them.