Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier says the company expects VSS Unity to begin commercial flights in the 4th quarter, flying monthly. VSS Imagine will begin testing in the fall and revenue flights in 1Q/23, initially with research payloads. It will fly twice a month.
Colglazier says the company plans to have 1,000 customers (“future astronauts”) signed up when commercial flights begin late this year. About 250 seats remaining. Once full, VG will build a “highly qualified reservation pipeline.”
Colglazier: will work with “tier one” suppliers to provide major subassemblies for future Delta-class spaceships and new mothership. Plan to have new final assembly facility operational by late 2023, capable of producing six spaceships a year.
Those Delta-class vehicle will be able to fly weekly, says CFO Doug Ahrens, but won’t being flying people until 2026. Company expects to be cash-flow positive by 2026.
As a reminder, here’s a chart from an investor day presentation in the fall of 2019 as Virgin Galactic was closing its SPAC merger. It project positive EBITDA of $12M in 2021; the company reported negative EBITDA of -$245M instead.
VG executive don’t explicitly state it, but it’s clear from flight rates that the company will not have flown its first 1,000 customers by the time the Delta-class vehicles begin flying customers in 2026.
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NASA’s Amit Kshatriya tells the NAC HEO committee they’re targeting “around the 15th or so” of February for SLS rollout, followed by wet dress rehearsal by the end of the month.
Mark Kirasich describes progress on the HLS award to SpaceX. SpaceX completed five milestones when protests/suits about award were cleared.
Kirasich says the draft RFP for the Lunar Exploration Transportation Services (LETS) program, which will procuring landing services for missions after Artemis 3, should be released this spring.
NASA’s Jim Free shows projected launches and other milestones for NASA exploration and space operations. The March 31 date for the Ax-1 mission is new to me; it was Feb. 28.
Free says the reorg of HEOMD into separate exploration and space ops mission directorates still going through approval processes (OMB, Congress, unions), hope “in the near term” all stakeholders approve.
Current manifest of Artemis missions. Artemis 2 is mid-2024 but will depend how well Artemis 1 goes (crew selection is later this year, which is what you’d expect for a 2024 launch.) Artemis 4 is currently planned only for Gateway; after Artemis 3 next landing is Artemis 5.
Not a lot new on the NASA/Boeing Starliner briefing right now. They have now removed two valves from the spacecraft to be sent to NASA MSFC for analysis, including CT scans.
NASA’s Steve Stich says that NASA’s plan is still, once Boeing’s Starliner gets certified, to alternate between Starliner and Crew Dragon missions to the ISS. Looking to add additional flights to the contracts (especially for SpaceX.)
Stich: I have no reason to believe that Boeing won’t be successful in getting Starliner operational.
From the ongoing public hearing on Starship/Super Heavy launches from Boca Chica.
The presentation was otherwise a recap of the draft environmental assessment released last month. Now a Spanish version of the same presentation before going on to public comment.
Now time for public comments. More than 100 people have signed up; each gets up to 3 minutes. Could be a while.
Senate appropriators: we think NASA should fund two HLS landers, not one, so we’ll increase the program’s budget by… 8%.
Curious item in Earth science: Senate appropriators want NASA to “support the development and demonstration of a prototype on-orbit robotically assembled Earth Science Platform.” No funding specified for it, though.
As others have noted, the report does not explicitly fund the SOFIA airborne observatory. NASA sought to terminate the program in its budget request but the House restored funding.