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Virgin Galactic says it will have three offerings: single-seat reservations (starting at $450,000), multiple-seat reservations for families and friends, and an option to purchase all six seats on a given flight. for a “modest premium,” CEO Michael Colglazier told investors during an earnings call on Thursday. Chairs for “microgravity research and professional astronaut training” will cost $600,000 each, he said.
The tickets will first be offered to a “list of early hand-raisers,” or people who have joined the company’s so-called “Spacefarer Community” by making a $1,000 deposit in recent months.
According to Aleanna Crane, Virgin Galactic’s Vice President of Communications, about 1,000 people have deposited money for such a deposit.
People who choose to bet the $450,000 for a seat may have to wait a while for their turn. More than 600 people who bought tickets for between $200,000 and $250,000 when Virgin Galactic sold its first batch of tickets nearly a decade ago are already on the waiting list for their chance to travel to the edge of space. to make.
It has taken much longer than the company initially expected to complete the development and testing program for SpaceShipTwo, as the company’s spaceplane is called. Most notably, one of the company’s co-pilots was killed in an accident in 2014 during a test flight.
Virgin Galactic has since revamped the aircraft’s design, partnered with a new manufacturing company and tested a new SpaceShipTwo on four successful flights that have reached the edge of space, including Branson’s, which took off last month.
The news that the company is reopening ticket sales came along with the company’s quarterly financial report, which showed a net loss of more than $94 million. Virgin Galactic has been in the red every quarter since it went public in 2019, though executives hope to turn around as it moves from its testing program to normal operations next year.
SpaceShipTwo offers customers a total experience of an hour, including a few minutes above what the US government considers the limit of space. Customers will ride up to about 40,000 to 50,000 feet in the air while the spaceplane is attached to a huge winged mothership. After cruising around for about half an hour, SpaceShipTwo is then released from the mothership, starts its rocket engine and dives right up as it hurtles past three times the speed of sound and reaches more than 80 miles above the Earth’s surface. Passengers will experience zero gravity and a view of the Earth for a few minutes before the aircraft returns to a runway.
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