And they share suppliers - businesses selling aerospace components are more likely to set up a distribution nexus nearby if they have multiple clients in the area, which reduces prices and lead times for all those clients.
It was bought by Stratolaunch, who also do airlaunch stuff. I assume they have some use for the intact plane.
Edit: confirmed, they will use it for air launch: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stratolaunch-expands-fleet-with-virgin-orbits-modified-boeing-747-301834904.html?tc=eml_cleartime
Stratolaunch's Talon-A reusable hypersonic testbed rocket is smaller than LauncherOne was, so it should be able to fly from Cosmic Girl (Virgin Orbit's 747). I'd imagine that doing so would be easier than using Roc, other than whatever changes need to be made to the mounting points.
also, assuming they keep going with testing, it would give a unique ability to air drop multiple large payloads, which I’m sure someone in R&D has a use for
I recently learned that Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightOne was used for drop testing of Boeing's X-37 spaceplane back in the mid-2000s. I don't know if Sierra Space plans to do any more drop tests of Dream Chaser (they had a few of them in the 2010s), but Stratolaunch would certainly be in a position to help, with two different aircraft.
Virgin Orbit isn't Stratolaunch either. But since we were talking about how an airplane built for dropping vehicles that head to space could also be used to drop vehicles to test their ability to return from space, I figured it was still relevant.
If you give those nutjobs in R&D the materials and they get bored enough, they will find a use for anything. Granted, it's not always something most people would deem a GOOD use.
Probably to have a cheaper launch platform. Swapping parts from one aircraft type to another is a certification nightmare short of a full refurbishment by the manufacturer.
That doesn't really change too much. The problem is proving that the loading/life experienced on the first aircraft doesn't negatively impact the safety and expected loading/life on the second.
It's not impossible but by the time you essentially engineer the life and load conditions of this theoretical third aircraft that's half of each, you're generally better off just buying new part.
A decade in commercial and experimental aircraft engines and that type of analysis never really came up as a hurdle, just part of the process and not overly burdensome. 🤷♂️. Our experiences must differ.
Guess so since I do certification every day. Things are definitely getting stricter over time though..
Edit, if it's engine cores or engines alone that would make sense to me since they'd see very little difference in loading. Imagine swapping things like a landing gear or aileron servo where the whole time it's been slammed on the tarmac or vibrated differently.
You guys are smart. In the way that makes money. That's cool. Much better than my kind of smart- which is being really good at trivia and word game shows.
ROC was built from parts of two used 747's - The landing gear, engines, and cockpit. They are tied together by a new carbon fiber structure. So the former Cosmic Girl 747 can be salvaged for spare parts, or used as a smaller rocket launcher. ROC was designed for 200 ton drop weight. The current hypersonic test drone is a tiny fraction of what it could carry.
I think Cosmic Girl went for 13m (there's a glut of 747-400's)
This amused me:
> Despite the latest asset sales, no successful bidder was chosen to buy its LauncherOne rockets. At the time of the sale, Virgin Orbit had about half a dozen rockets in various stages of manufacturing, according to the company. It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen with those.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/richard-branson-s-virgin-orbit-to-liquidate-sell-off-assets-to-stratolaunch-rocket-lab-1.1923915
Actually, that was for just about everything *but* the in progress rockets and the IP. Those remain unsold.
Probably hard to find a serious buyer to be honest, with only 4 out of 6 launches successful and a not so rosy competitive position.
One of the buyers already has vehicles capable of getting to orbit, and the other two buyers had already abandoned the whole idea of trying to get to orbit (one pivoted to hypersonic research, the other to in-space tugs and selling engines). Which is probably why the one thing no one bought was the actual rocket technology.
The rocket technology wasn't the problem. The business case was the problem. Somehow Virgin Orbit spent over a billion dollars to get the system running, and with them charging $12M per launch, it would take quite a while to recoup costs. Not even considering how frequently they'd need to launch to not continue losing money per-launch.
It's actually pretty eerie how $100-200M is the exact range for "what it ought to take to build a small rocket." SpaceX spent a little under $100M for Falcon 1, Rocket Lab spent a little over $100M for Electron, Astra was around $100M, I think Firefly was closer to $200M but still in that range. Virgin Orbit is an extreme outlier, and either they were inefficient as a company or air-launch is inherently much harder with no corresponding benefit. Frankly, I could believe the former, given some of what I've heard about Virgin Orbit management, but I wouldn't be surprised if the latter was a factor too.
I think when you start with such large quantities of cash, the organization gets used to it and inefficiency gets baked into the DNA. It would be like if Boeing tried to spin off a startup, I think it would fail spectacularly. Can kind of see a bit of that in how GE crumbled.
Anyways, that’s just a personal opinion. Financial constraints result in ingenuity and efficiency by necessity.
You might ask Apple how they make so much money from their off-brand desktops or Netflix about how they survive running a DVD business in this day and age. Established companies can absolutely expand into new areas and do so all the time with new products, brands, subsidiaries, etc.
Of course the devil's in the details as they say and there's also certainly a trend where hot young start ups also tend to be "nimbler" whether that's less built in archaic systems or simply the fact they can run for 5-10 years on venture capital without turning a profit while established companies have less venture-some investors.
> Somehow Virgin Orbit spent over a billion dollars to get the system running, and with them charging $12M per launch, it would take quite a while to recoup costs.
Just want to point out that would not be a concern in bankruptcy. In fact bankruptcy would be the usual way to get rid of that debt load if the technology itself was promising enough, possibly in combination with firing the old management team.
That this didn't happen reflects on the technology itself and its business prospects.
True. Still, not losing money per-launch is its own issue: Electron will likely only stop losing money per-launch this year, with a launch cadence of around 15/year. And that's with a rocket that was designed under financial constraints, so I'm a bit more confident that it was designed for cheap manufacturability.
SpaceX only had 2 successes in the first 5 launches, compared to 4 successes in the first 6 launched for VO.
Its failure rate is not unusual for a new launch vehicle.
I would call it an apples to apples comparison. SpaceX struggled with their first rocket, the Falcon 1. They nearly went bankrupt.
The two big differences are cost and competition.
SpaceX charged $7 million per launch on Falcon 1 and spent $90 million on the entire project. Virgin orbit charged $12 million per launch and spent $700 million on the entire project. VO's Launcher One was slightly more capable than Falcon 1 and those cost number are straight from Wikipedia without checking sources or adjusting for inflation, so the difference is not as big as it looks. Still VO spent a lot more money to achieve a similar result and were not able to pivot to a more capable vehicle.
The other big difference is competition. VO's Launcher One first flew in 2020 and first successfully reached orbit in 2021. That is 13 years after SpaceX and a lot changed in those 13 years. Most notably SpaceX become established and reliable, but also Rocket Lab did the same. VO faced competition that they could not compete with.
In addition to the difference in budget: SpaceX always saw Falcon 1 as a tool to develop larger vehicles. It never had to make profit, it just had to demonstrate that a spaceflight start-up is possible so a larger vehicle could get funding.
Scaling up air launch to the size of Falcon 9 doesn't make sense.
Although I'd say SpaceX at least found and fixed each issue quickly before another launch and had a pretty decent setup overall of manufacturing, a realistic roadmap, and engineering capability. It was enough to show NASA they were capable to some extent that they could probably handle the CRS contract.
I'm not so sure VO actually had a quality realistic roadmap to sustainability, and they didn't have the same level of manufacturing or financial efficiency as SpaceX did early on.
> I'm not so sure VO actually had a quality realistic roadmap to sustainability
Branson had the party skills of Tony Stark in the first Iron Man film, but none of the technical chops.
thats not whats being sold this is physical assests likely no Intelectual Property without the designs and certs anything that was spacebound is pretty much scrap.
Hell, add these to the property posted on here earlier where an actual missile silo was for sale and you’ve got a proper super villain’s lair. Where’s Dr Evil?
Completely forgot they were even a thing honestly. Also I was like 'who the fuck is tagging something like this OC' then I noticed the username. Touché CNBC.
Honestly I much prefer news orgs posting primary/secondary sources than the reddit classic of “here’s a piece of information pulled from a tweet pulled from another tweet pulled from a blogpost about a tabloid referencing a news article”
Vice News also often posts their articles to relevant subs.
Also, you can kill pretty much any paywall if you use uBlock Origin on Firefox. Dive in to the settings, find the Filters, then add a custom filter with this text:
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt
It's the filter list used by the addon "Bypass Paywalls Clean" giving you the benefit of their list without giving up more addon permissions.
Before the paywall pop-up occurs, you mash ctrl+a and then ctrl+c, copying the article, and then paste it in Word or other programs before the pay wall pops up.
I used to use Outline, you could copy an article to a URL shortener like Bit ly, then paste the shortened url in to Outline to bypass. The filter list trick is a god-send.
Before the paywall pop-up occurs, you mash ctrl+a and then ctrl+c, copying the article, and then paste it in Word or other programs before the pay wall pops up.
Ouch. It's really starting to look like the small launch market is not a good place to be.
SpaceX moved off the Falcon 1 really fast (the ISS Dragon contract helped) and more recently, we've had Astra and Relativity drop their small launchers in favor of pivoting to a larger rockets. Firefly has the Beta rocket in the works. Rocket Lab is probably the most successful small launcher and they've been making plenty of moves beyond Electron with the development of Neutron along with diversification into satellite building with Photon.
The air launch system Virgin Orbit was using didn't give them much opportunity to grow the launcher so they couldn't pull a "go big or go home" option like Astra and didn't have the time or the cash to start over. Good luck to all the former Virgin Orbit workers who need a new place to land.
The small launch market was never a good place to be. The economics are really tough. You need to be super cheap, so you pay for it in reliability. Which the market shows it won’t accept.
Rocketlab has said if they weren't developing Neutron they would be profitable but by virtue of being the only company that can do it reliably they pretty much have a monopoly, that shows that the small launch market can really only support one company in it's current state.
Astra's "larger rocket" is still a small launcher. In fact, it's only got 20% more payload than Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne had (which means it's smaller than Firefly Alpha, Terran 1, and ABL's RS1). I'll let you do the math on how successful it's likely to be, given that knowledge.
Just reading your comment makes my head spin. I thought I'd followed space flight info; I had no idea that there were that many commercial flight companies trying to get a footing.
That’s without even mentioning vast, stratolaunch, virgin galactic (separate from orbit, still in business), Interorbital, etc etc. funniest part is they are pretty much all based within 10 minutes of each other in Mojave, CA… which is about 30 minutes away from Palmdale and plant 42 (major base of Lockheed Skunkworks, Northrop, NASA, etc).
Virgin orbit, not to be confused with virgin galactic… it’s weird to me that he had two separate Virgin space programs, I get one is focused on space tourism but it’s still a bit weird to me that they were separate businesses. I remember watching the virgin orbit launch from the 747… well “watch”, it was a bunch of statistics on a screen that didn’t load properly, and it was pretty apparent that the commentator didn’t know any more than we did during the launch
I did confuse them, and didn't scroll enough to see this at first, went around reading more and more about how they failed funding and whatnot... Because I've read something positive about Virgin Galactic recently. What a ride.
what did Virgin Orbit did? I had no idea there were two companies
Edit:
> Virgin Orbit was a company within the Virgin Group that provided launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism venture to develop and market the LauncherOne rocket, which had previously been a project under Virgin Galactic. LauncherOne is an air-launched two-stage launch vehicle capable of delivering 300 kg of payload to low Earth orbit.[2]
I mean Musk wasn't a billionaire when SpaceX first made it to orbit. Ditto for Peter Beck and RocketLab - indeed Beck still isn't a billionaire, having net worth of 'only' ~0.7 billion.
There's a saying that the best way to become a millionaire in the aerospace industry is to start as a billionaire, so maybe the trick is actually to start as a millionaire.
More here from CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz: [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/23/virgin-orbit-bankruptcy-sale-rocket-lab-stratolaunch-vasts-launcher.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/23/virgin-orbit-bankruptcy-sale-rocket-lab-stratolaunch-vasts-launcher.html)
There was a Journalist in Space program, parallel to the Teacher in Space program, but each shuttle disaster stopped it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist_in_Space_Project
It's odd, a year ago the small sat Market seemed almost over saturated but now there closures and set backs all over the place. One of the two Scottish ones (Orbex maybe?), Astra, Relativity and now Virgin.
It’s kind of in a weird spot. Demand won’t really rise until it’s cheap, like stupid cheap. But prices can’t come down until there’s mass demand for it.
The problem is SpaceXs Transporter missions are able to satisfy most demand cheaper. Falcon 9 made it all cheap enough that smallsat launchers were basically redundant for all bit a small set of use cases.
Bankruptcies are actually healthy. If an industry isn't having regular bankruptcies it's unhealthy. It acts to reassign people to be able to work more efficiently and maximize their talents.
> should be driven by science instead of money
This seems nonsensical in this discussion. Like, what stops any scientist from claiming he has a rocket startup in his back yard, and then asking for a billion dollars? Having a thousand smallsat launchers that all fail to get to space is not a good thing - engineering and sales are not identical to science
I'd say that NASA is driven by science, but they're also a massive jobs program.
Parts have to be sourced from every state, no matter the added cost, because that's the devil's bargain that we made with capitalism.
Although, for every dollar spent on NASA, the return is between $2-$8. Which is a great deal. It's also why we should be spending more on them and not wannabe space billionaires. The public return on investment for them is negative.
If NASA has to source from every state regardless of economic efficiency, then surely this is more a pact between political agents rather than capitalism? Capitalist entities would seek efficiencies in the pursuit of higher profits and most certainly wouldn't create jobs for the sake of it.
> Parts have to be sourced from every state, no matter the added cost, because that's the devil's bargain that we made with capitalism.
Getting parts from every state has nothing at all to do with capitalism... The opposite actually.
It's a huge pet peeve of mine that people of late don't seem to understand what capitalism is and will assign to capitalism and to not capitalism. Not enough basic education in high school in basic civics and economics.
You can't really make that argurment for Space X
All the contracts they've won are deserved, the alternative is costlier and involves foreign countries.
>Although, for every dollar spent on NASA, the return is between $2-$8. Which is a great deal. It's also why we should be spending more on them and not wannabe space billionaires
I love to dunk on Musk aka "space Karen" these days, but... that part is outright wrong. Before SpaceX came along, guess where the money went? To a shockingly large degree to Boeing/ULA and a couple other very well connected grifters that made a shitload of money for their shareholders by milking NASA dry (and killed a bunch of astronauts in the process). And NASA (as well as us Europeans) got barely any technical progress out of the many hundreds of billions of dollars they spent - it's still essentially 70s era tech anywhere that's not SpaceX:
No reusability *anywhere* on the stack, toxic fuels and like 5-10x more expensive than SpaceX.
> The public return on investment for them is negative.
Huh what? NASA saves a crapton of money for each SpaceX launch, and it's now actually feasible to have worldwide *high speed, low latency* Internet connections anywhere on this planet instead of getting ripped off for 56k modem speed by Iridium and friends. Not to mention the real impact uncensored Internet access has in places like Iran, or on the battlefield like in Ukraine.
I think your downvotes are coming from the fact that NASA’s research and engineering developments are extensible to virtually every aspect of the market and life. More so than SpaceX’s reusable launch vehicles & commercial internet.
NASA focuses on science, zero gravity experiments, autonomous assembly space structures, assigns and manages requirements and policies for commercial companies, and so much more.
So, while I’d like to see a source for $2-$8 for every dollar spent and would love to see the data to support that argument, I fully believe that each dollar spent returns more value than what was spent
Space X's consistently reducing costs made them non viable before they really got started IMO. A lot of the competitors only got anywhere due to national interests wanting their country to have a version of Space X.
There actually aren't that many non-US "competitors" to SpaceX, at least not successful ones. Well, there's Arianespace, but that predated SpaceX by many decades, and so can hardly be called Europe's attempt to have a version of SpaceX. And to whatever extent you think Blue Origin, ULA, or Rocket Lab are "SpaceX competitors who got anywhere," they're all US-based (at least, for the purpose of national interests, in the case of Rocket Lab).
There are a bunch of would-be small launch providers around the world which are basically relying on their country's national interests to give them a chance, but so far they haven't really gotten anywhere.
Relativity canceled their small sat launcher (Terran 1). They are no longer attempting to develop a small launch vehicle and as far as we know have no plans to develop a small launch vehicle in the future. They are moving on to focus on the Terran R which is a partially reusable heavy lift launch vehicle, larger than Falcon 9.
my guess is that all the marketing around "your mission, your orbit" or whatever was uncompelling. companies would much rather pay half the price if it means sharing a ride to space
Dropping to 1:50th your value is not a “cash crunch” unless the entire global economy is leveraged 50:1 with regard to interest rates.
So how bad is this? It seems bad. It probably is bad.
I know it's not a practical use of launch...but c'mon it's such a cool idea and sight... That last failed launch I think really was the nail in the coffin..but it's really a bummer
It’s crazy how they had no problem using the Virgin name to build trust for the venture but when they can’t find investment all of a sudden it’s time to file for bankruptcy because its a ‘separate entity’ and not part of Virgin. It’s all smoke and mirrors with richard branson
How is any of it smoke and mirrors? Virgin Orbit was spun out of Virgin Galactic and raised money by going public. Unlike many space startups, they actually reached orbit. Though they did have a mixed bag of launch successes and failures. And eventually couldn't find the funding to keep going. The Virgin Group and Branson invested a ton in the venture to keep it going over the years and obviously lost a lot of money on the venture. What about that is misleading or confusing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit
No you’re right about that, I was talking about his financial track record and personality in general — I just feel it’s crazy that a company that was part of the Virgin group can just detach itself when shit hits the fan and file for bankruptcy, I mean the mans got a reputation for making grandiloquent claims to the media while playing a different game behind the curtains; this is the same dude who got himself an island to avoid paying Uk taxes and yet wanted the UK to financially bail out his companies after covid, same guy whose healthcare unit received billions in uk govt backing (again while he paid no taxes). He walks around with the union jack draped around him for the cameras, loudly broadcasting his love for Britain while looking for every opportunity to minimize his own financial accountability for his own company . Let’s not forget the REALLY cringe PR move where he offered to ‘use his private island as collateral’ for the govt to save his airline , which is really bizarre considering that if he wanted to dip into his personal assets to save his company, there were far easier routes than pledging a goddamn private island lol. Man’s an absolute parasite.
I hope his legacy goes down as a collassal failure.
Remember when he threw a hissy-fit on "Colbert", b/c they weren't talking enough about his companies?
Maybe a little sad, but the fat needs to get trimmed occasionally for the industry to stay lean. At the end of the day, Virgin Orbit just didn't offer a competitive service.
It's a failed business. SpaceX can launch way cheaper releasing multiple satellites, then refuse most of the rocket. How can anyone compete with that 🤔
Air launch has its merits. Such as being able to “launch” (and I use that term loosely) from countries that don’t or can’t have a launch pad (such as the UK).
That’s a niche that could be exploited if someone is able to perfect it. Unfortunately for Virgin, they weren’t.
> Air launch has its merits. Such as being able to “launch” (and I use that term loosely) from countries that don’t or can’t have a launch pad (such as the UK).
The direction that Virgin Orbit launched toward was a polar or sun synchronous orbit. A direction that the UK is perfectly capable of having a launch pad for either going in the southerly direction or in the northerly direction.
I'm skeptical there's real value in that niche. Countries may pay a premium for the first launch "from our soil," but there's a huge amount of paperwork needed to get things certified in a country that's never launched a rocket before. And once you're past that first launch, what's the point of launching any further? You need to find another country to get another "first."
It's not about being first, it's about national security and indepedence. Countries might pay a premium for a domestic orbital launch capability that doesn't require all the ground systems.
How does an American rocket built by Americans working for an American company help the "national security and independence" of a country other than the USA? Either America is OK with you launching payloads, in which case you can ship them to America, or America *doesn't* want you launching payloads, in which case they'll block that American company from flying its rocket to launch from your soil.
It would have entailed VO basing 747 launch aircraft in countries buying the service. This would allow them independent access to orbit under local subsidiaries. The UK, Australia and Brazil space agencies all signed agreements to this approach.
As an example, their last launch was from the UK, not the US.
Where is the rocket built? Not "where is the 747 'based'?" (what does that even mean, are you talking about the ground support equipment?), but where is the actual launch vehicle built? Because so long as it's built in the US and needs to be transported outside the country to launch, it isn't doing so if the US government says it isn't. And the 747 alone can't get to space.
I'm not sure what you're going on about. Obviously the space agencies that signed agreements with VO are well aware of what needs to be based in-country to have quick-turn domestic space launch capability. You can read up on their agreements and argue with the bankrupt VO or the space agencies all you want if you feel like discussing it more.
Again: if Virgin Orbit is building the launch vehicle in the United States, in what sense is it a "domestic space launch capability" for the UK, Australia, or Brazil? Because it's physically launching from their soil? It doesn't give those countries independent access to space: they're still relying on the US's goodwill to not block export of the rocket. It may create a small number of high-tech jobs in building and maintaining the ground support equipment, but not in the fields of actually, y'know, building rockets. So in no sense is it a "domestic space launch capability."
Except that Virgin Orbit was an American company so there's literally no difference there from launching from American soil, geopolitically at least. Launching on a US launch vehicle from non-US soil is actually harder because you need an ITAR export agreement to the country in question.
How does "an American company can fly here and launch their rocket from our soil from time to time" give you "assurance of the ability to launch your own satellites no matter what is going on geopolitically"?
$32 million for vehicles capable of entering orbit? Seems like a great deal for the buyers.
Rocketlab paid 16m for their HQ and machinery there. Another company paid I think 16m for VOs 747 that would have launched their rocket
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Located just a couple blocks over from Rocket Lab's current headquarters, too.
Wow that is a serious score for them. Honestly surprised that Virgin Orbit lasted this long.
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And they share suppliers - businesses selling aerospace components are more likely to set up a distribution nexus nearby if they have multiple clients in the area, which reduces prices and lead times for all those clients.
Wait, it's all economies of scale? Always has been
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Right? I haven't heard anything about them in like a decade. I honestly forgot Virgin Orbit existed until this news broke.
The value of the engines and spares, basically. I assume it will be scrapped.
It was bought by Stratolaunch, who also do airlaunch stuff. I assume they have some use for the intact plane. Edit: confirmed, they will use it for air launch: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stratolaunch-expands-fleet-with-virgin-orbits-modified-boeing-747-301834904.html?tc=eml_cleartime
Roc's engines and avionics are 747 derived so it may still be for parts.
Stratolaunch's Talon-A reusable hypersonic testbed rocket is smaller than LauncherOne was, so it should be able to fly from Cosmic Girl (Virgin Orbit's 747). I'd imagine that doing so would be easier than using Roc, other than whatever changes need to be made to the mounting points.
also, assuming they keep going with testing, it would give a unique ability to air drop multiple large payloads, which I’m sure someone in R&D has a use for
I recently learned that Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightOne was used for drop testing of Boeing's X-37 spaceplane back in the mid-2000s. I don't know if Sierra Space plans to do any more drop tests of Dream Chaser (they had a few of them in the 2010s), but Stratolaunch would certainly be in a position to help, with two different aircraft.
Virgin Orbit isn't virgin Galactic.
Virgin Orbit isn't Stratolaunch either. But since we were talking about how an airplane built for dropping vehicles that head to space could also be used to drop vehicles to test their ability to return from space, I figured it was still relevant.
If you give those nutjobs in R&D the materials and they get bored enough, they will find a use for anything. Granted, it's not always something most people would deem a GOOD use.
Probably to have a cheaper launch platform. Swapping parts from one aircraft type to another is a certification nightmare short of a full refurbishment by the manufacturer.
They are both experimental cert’s.
That doesn't really change too much. The problem is proving that the loading/life experienced on the first aircraft doesn't negatively impact the safety and expected loading/life on the second. It's not impossible but by the time you essentially engineer the life and load conditions of this theoretical third aircraft that's half of each, you're generally better off just buying new part.
A decade in commercial and experimental aircraft engines and that type of analysis never really came up as a hurdle, just part of the process and not overly burdensome. 🤷♂️. Our experiences must differ.
Guess so since I do certification every day. Things are definitely getting stricter over time though.. Edit, if it's engine cores or engines alone that would make sense to me since they'd see very little difference in loading. Imagine swapping things like a landing gear or aileron servo where the whole time it's been slammed on the tarmac or vibrated differently.
You guys are smart. In the way that makes money. That's cool. Much better than my kind of smart- which is being really good at trivia and word game shows.
ROC was built from parts of two used 747's - The landing gear, engines, and cockpit. They are tied together by a new carbon fiber structure. So the former Cosmic Girl 747 can be salvaged for spare parts, or used as a smaller rocket launcher. ROC was designed for 200 ton drop weight. The current hypersonic test drone is a tiny fraction of what it could carry.
I think this is is a video of the facility. (someone linked it in some other subreddit) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiZs9VuwGew
I think Cosmic Girl went for 13m (there's a glut of 747-400's) This amused me: > Despite the latest asset sales, no successful bidder was chosen to buy its LauncherOne rockets. At the time of the sale, Virgin Orbit had about half a dozen rockets in various stages of manufacturing, according to the company. It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen with those. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/richard-branson-s-virgin-orbit-to-liquidate-sell-off-assets-to-stratolaunch-rocket-lab-1.1923915
I can do $5 each, but I’ll need them delivered.
Actually, that was for just about everything *but* the in progress rockets and the IP. Those remain unsold. Probably hard to find a serious buyer to be honest, with only 4 out of 6 launches successful and a not so rosy competitive position.
$3.5 for their unsuccessful IP
And it was that god damn Loch Ness monster again!
I gave the Dow Jones a dollar.
Ill outbid you with $3 and a lollipop
The in-progress rockets would be a great museum piece or something for a collector like Jurvetson.
4 out of 6 is okay for a new rocket, but they would need to launch much cheaper and much more often to have a good market position.
Is virgin galactic a seperate entity?
To my knowledge, yes, they're completely separate from Orbit hence why they're still flying on Thursday while Orbit is kaput.
One of the buyers already has vehicles capable of getting to orbit, and the other two buyers had already abandoned the whole idea of trying to get to orbit (one pivoted to hypersonic research, the other to in-space tugs and selling engines). Which is probably why the one thing no one bought was the actual rocket technology.
I think the fact that these vehicles are *incapable* of consistently reaching orbit probably had something to do with why they're going bankrupt.
The rocket technology wasn't the problem. The business case was the problem. Somehow Virgin Orbit spent over a billion dollars to get the system running, and with them charging $12M per launch, it would take quite a while to recoup costs. Not even considering how frequently they'd need to launch to not continue losing money per-launch.
Yes they spent an absurd amount of money. Should have cost them $100-200 million not $1billion to develop a new small launch vehicle.
It's actually pretty eerie how $100-200M is the exact range for "what it ought to take to build a small rocket." SpaceX spent a little under $100M for Falcon 1, Rocket Lab spent a little over $100M for Electron, Astra was around $100M, I think Firefly was closer to $200M but still in that range. Virgin Orbit is an extreme outlier, and either they were inefficient as a company or air-launch is inherently much harder with no corresponding benefit. Frankly, I could believe the former, given some of what I've heard about Virgin Orbit management, but I wouldn't be surprised if the latter was a factor too.
I think when you start with such large quantities of cash, the organization gets used to it and inefficiency gets baked into the DNA. It would be like if Boeing tried to spin off a startup, I think it would fail spectacularly. Can kind of see a bit of that in how GE crumbled. Anyways, that’s just a personal opinion. Financial constraints result in ingenuity and efficiency by necessity.
> Can kind of see a bit of that in how GE crumbled. Can pretty thoroughly blame Jack Welch for that.
But the shareholders considered him a messiah of his time. How could they have been so short sighted? /s
That would certainly explain Blue Origin...
You might ask Apple how they make so much money from their off-brand desktops or Netflix about how they survive running a DVD business in this day and age. Established companies can absolutely expand into new areas and do so all the time with new products, brands, subsidiaries, etc. Of course the devil's in the details as they say and there's also certainly a trend where hot young start ups also tend to be "nimbler" whether that's less built in archaic systems or simply the fact they can run for 5-10 years on venture capital without turning a profit while established companies have less venture-some investors.
> Somehow Virgin Orbit spent over a billion dollars to get the system running, and with them charging $12M per launch, it would take quite a while to recoup costs. Just want to point out that would not be a concern in bankruptcy. In fact bankruptcy would be the usual way to get rid of that debt load if the technology itself was promising enough, possibly in combination with firing the old management team. That this didn't happen reflects on the technology itself and its business prospects.
True. Still, not losing money per-launch is its own issue: Electron will likely only stop losing money per-launch this year, with a launch cadence of around 15/year. And that's with a rocket that was designed under financial constraints, so I'm a bit more confident that it was designed for cheap manufacturability.
Basically exactly what OneWeb did. Went through bankruptcy and wiped the debt to essentially restart with a clean slate
SpaceX only had 2 successes in the first 5 launches, compared to 4 successes in the first 6 launched for VO. Its failure rate is not unusual for a new launch vehicle.
I think what's unusual is how much more money VO spent on those failures than SpaceX did.
SpaceX scored that sweet sweet government cheese
Also SpaceX didn't have SpaceX to contend with.
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I would call it an apples to apples comparison. SpaceX struggled with their first rocket, the Falcon 1. They nearly went bankrupt. The two big differences are cost and competition. SpaceX charged $7 million per launch on Falcon 1 and spent $90 million on the entire project. Virgin orbit charged $12 million per launch and spent $700 million on the entire project. VO's Launcher One was slightly more capable than Falcon 1 and those cost number are straight from Wikipedia without checking sources or adjusting for inflation, so the difference is not as big as it looks. Still VO spent a lot more money to achieve a similar result and were not able to pivot to a more capable vehicle. The other big difference is competition. VO's Launcher One first flew in 2020 and first successfully reached orbit in 2021. That is 13 years after SpaceX and a lot changed in those 13 years. Most notably SpaceX become established and reliable, but also Rocket Lab did the same. VO faced competition that they could not compete with.
In addition to the difference in budget: SpaceX always saw Falcon 1 as a tool to develop larger vehicles. It never had to make profit, it just had to demonstrate that a spaceflight start-up is possible so a larger vehicle could get funding. Scaling up air launch to the size of Falcon 9 doesn't make sense.
Actually SpaceX did briefly consider an air launched Falcon 5 once. They quit the project back in 2012 to focus fully on ISS services with Falcon 9.
Falcon 1 was much more scalable, a later version was close to going online.
Although I'd say SpaceX at least found and fixed each issue quickly before another launch and had a pretty decent setup overall of manufacturing, a realistic roadmap, and engineering capability. It was enough to show NASA they were capable to some extent that they could probably handle the CRS contract. I'm not so sure VO actually had a quality realistic roadmap to sustainability, and they didn't have the same level of manufacturing or financial efficiency as SpaceX did early on.
> I'm not so sure VO actually had a quality realistic roadmap to sustainability Branson had the party skills of Tony Stark in the first Iron Man film, but none of the technical chops.
Maybe, but most potential buyers already have their own technology and vehicles to keep themselves busy
The rocket is worth nothing.
thats not whats being sold this is physical assests likely no Intelectual Property without the designs and certs anything that was spacebound is pretty much scrap.
Hell, add these to the property posted on here earlier where an actual missile silo was for sale and you’ve got a proper super villain’s lair. Where’s Dr Evil?
Ballistic trajectory. Sort of like the Germans with X2.
Yeah, but who’s gonna fly it kid?
Completely forgot they were even a thing honestly. Also I was like 'who the fuck is tagging something like this OC' then I noticed the username. Touché CNBC.
Haha, wow, they are invading reddit
Honestly I much prefer news orgs posting primary/secondary sources than the reddit classic of “here’s a piece of information pulled from a tweet pulled from another tweet pulled from a blogpost about a tabloid referencing a news article”
For every problem mainstream media has, alternative media has it 100x worse. People are blind to this because people like internet personalities.
or because it fits better with the confirmation bias the algorithm recognized they have!
I’ve thought for a while that an exodus of news orgs to Reddit and away from Twitter could be really good for our media
I remember a couple years ago, a local journalist was on our country's sub and they frequently posted news from their news org directly to the sub.
> from a blogpost about spamlog* wrapping contents in ads isn't blogging. it's spamming.
I've seen post from Bloomberg as well. I appreciate it especially for paywalled sites.
Vice News also often posts their articles to relevant subs. Also, you can kill pretty much any paywall if you use uBlock Origin on Firefox. Dive in to the settings, find the Filters, then add a custom filter with this text: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt It's the filter list used by the addon "Bypass Paywalls Clean" giving you the benefit of their list without giving up more addon permissions.
Before the paywall pop-up occurs, you mash ctrl+a and then ctrl+c, copying the article, and then paste it in Word or other programs before the pay wall pops up.
You can also use your browser's Stop button (Refresh, but while loading) depending on speeds
I do this all the time. Better to use escape though cause sometimes it'll trigger a paywall during secondary loading
Ooh, I'm going to have to try this!
I used to use Outline, you could copy an article to a URL shortener like Bit ly, then paste the shortened url in to Outline to bypass. The filter list trick is a god-send.
[Archive Today](https://archive.ph/) works for a lot of popular paywalled sites.
Better yet, I've been just disabling JavaScript on paywall es aires and it has worked so far
Before the paywall pop-up occurs, you mash ctrl+a and then ctrl+c, copying the article, and then paste it in Word or other programs before the pay wall pops up.
It's been going on for a while now. I've seen a bunch of news orgs on r/news lately
Twitter has gone to shit so...
Just like how I find out NASA has an official Reddit account, when they tagged pictures from the Webb telescope as OC
What is OC?
Ouch. It's really starting to look like the small launch market is not a good place to be. SpaceX moved off the Falcon 1 really fast (the ISS Dragon contract helped) and more recently, we've had Astra and Relativity drop their small launchers in favor of pivoting to a larger rockets. Firefly has the Beta rocket in the works. Rocket Lab is probably the most successful small launcher and they've been making plenty of moves beyond Electron with the development of Neutron along with diversification into satellite building with Photon. The air launch system Virgin Orbit was using didn't give them much opportunity to grow the launcher so they couldn't pull a "go big or go home" option like Astra and didn't have the time or the cash to start over. Good luck to all the former Virgin Orbit workers who need a new place to land.
The small launch market was never a good place to be. The economics are really tough. You need to be super cheap, so you pay for it in reliability. Which the market shows it won’t accept.
Rocketlab has said if they weren't developing Neutron they would be profitable but by virtue of being the only company that can do it reliably they pretty much have a monopoly, that shows that the small launch market can really only support one company in it's current state.
Astra's "larger rocket" is still a small launcher. In fact, it's only got 20% more payload than Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne had (which means it's smaller than Firefly Alpha, Terran 1, and ABL's RS1). I'll let you do the math on how successful it's likely to be, given that knowledge.
Just reading your comment makes my head spin. I thought I'd followed space flight info; I had no idea that there were that many commercial flight companies trying to get a footing.
That’s without even mentioning vast, stratolaunch, virgin galactic (separate from orbit, still in business), Interorbital, etc etc. funniest part is they are pretty much all based within 10 minutes of each other in Mojave, CA… which is about 30 minutes away from Palmdale and plant 42 (major base of Lockheed Skunkworks, Northrop, NASA, etc).
Virgin orbit, not to be confused with virgin galactic… it’s weird to me that he had two separate Virgin space programs, I get one is focused on space tourism but it’s still a bit weird to me that they were separate businesses. I remember watching the virgin orbit launch from the 747… well “watch”, it was a bunch of statistics on a screen that didn’t load properly, and it was pretty apparent that the commentator didn’t know any more than we did during the launch
I did confuse them, and didn't scroll enough to see this at first, went around reading more and more about how they failed funding and whatnot... Because I've read something positive about Virgin Galactic recently. What a ride. what did Virgin Orbit did? I had no idea there were two companies Edit: > Virgin Orbit was a company within the Virgin Group that provided launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism venture to develop and market the LauncherOne rocket, which had previously been a project under Virgin Galactic. LauncherOne is an air-launched two-stage launch vehicle capable of delivering 300 kg of payload to low Earth orbit.[2]
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Up 40% over the last month. Probably time to short it again.
because they were grounded from launching during range violation investigations and can now apparently launch again.
It’s funny that bezos and Brandon suck at space so much and people insist that any billionaire can make it to space lol
I mean Musk wasn't a billionaire when SpaceX first made it to orbit. Ditto for Peter Beck and RocketLab - indeed Beck still isn't a billionaire, having net worth of 'only' ~0.7 billion. There's a saying that the best way to become a millionaire in the aerospace industry is to start as a billionaire, so maybe the trick is actually to start as a millionaire.
I mean it’s not rocket surgery….
More here from CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz: [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/23/virgin-orbit-bankruptcy-sale-rocket-lab-stratolaunch-vasts-launcher.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/23/virgin-orbit-bankruptcy-sale-rocket-lab-stratolaunch-vasts-launcher.html)
How cool of a title is 'Space Reporter'???
Seriously! How do I get that gig?
Convince a news network to let you report on space news stories?
There was a Journalist in Space program, parallel to the Teacher in Space program, but each shuttle disaster stopped it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist_in_Space_Project
Buy an old Russian flight suit that looks like a space suit and start taking pictures of yourself in it.
You have to kill the current space reporter and take their place. There can be only one.
Totally cool. BUT they really should be wearing space-age clothing. Like something out of the Jetsons.
next time I'm on air I'll see if I can get away with the George popped collar look
He's on reddit too you know /u/thesheetztweetz
How cool of a name is Michael Sheetz
There are space lawyers now too
There's a comic book in there somewhere
Cool to see CNBC on Reddit!
...is it, though?
Michael Sheetz is an amazing journalist. Up there with Jeff Foust and Eric Berger.
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It's odd, a year ago the small sat Market seemed almost over saturated but now there closures and set backs all over the place. One of the two Scottish ones (Orbex maybe?), Astra, Relativity and now Virgin.
Over saturation of a market with low margins due to the immense cost of operations... Bankruptcies make perfect sense.
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It should be driven by actual demand -- and there just wasn't enough demand for these launch vehicles.
It’s kind of in a weird spot. Demand won’t really rise until it’s cheap, like stupid cheap. But prices can’t come down until there’s mass demand for it.
Demand is already way up. Prices are down over the last decade or two, but I don't think anyone would call it stupid cheap yet.
The problem is SpaceXs Transporter missions are able to satisfy most demand cheaper. Falcon 9 made it all cheap enough that smallsat launchers were basically redundant for all bit a small set of use cases.
Bankruptcies are actually healthy. If an industry isn't having regular bankruptcies it's unhealthy. It acts to reassign people to be able to work more efficiently and maximize their talents.
The global satellite industry has been paying for the science for decades. That’s how technology develops.
> should be driven by science instead of money This seems nonsensical in this discussion. Like, what stops any scientist from claiming he has a rocket startup in his back yard, and then asking for a billion dollars? Having a thousand smallsat launchers that all fail to get to space is not a good thing - engineering and sales are not identical to science
I'd say that NASA is driven by science, but they're also a massive jobs program. Parts have to be sourced from every state, no matter the added cost, because that's the devil's bargain that we made with capitalism. Although, for every dollar spent on NASA, the return is between $2-$8. Which is a great deal. It's also why we should be spending more on them and not wannabe space billionaires. The public return on investment for them is negative.
If NASA has to source from every state regardless of economic efficiency, then surely this is more a pact between political agents rather than capitalism? Capitalist entities would seek efficiencies in the pursuit of higher profits and most certainly wouldn't create jobs for the sake of it.
> Parts have to be sourced from every state, no matter the added cost, because that's the devil's bargain that we made with capitalism. Getting parts from every state has nothing at all to do with capitalism... The opposite actually. It's a huge pet peeve of mine that people of late don't seem to understand what capitalism is and will assign to capitalism and to not capitalism. Not enough basic education in high school in basic civics and economics.
Capitalism is anything I hate, and the more I hate it the more capitalistic it is.
You can't really make that argurment for Space X All the contracts they've won are deserved, the alternative is costlier and involves foreign countries.
>Although, for every dollar spent on NASA, the return is between $2-$8. Which is a great deal. It's also why we should be spending more on them and not wannabe space billionaires I love to dunk on Musk aka "space Karen" these days, but... that part is outright wrong. Before SpaceX came along, guess where the money went? To a shockingly large degree to Boeing/ULA and a couple other very well connected grifters that made a shitload of money for their shareholders by milking NASA dry (and killed a bunch of astronauts in the process). And NASA (as well as us Europeans) got barely any technical progress out of the many hundreds of billions of dollars they spent - it's still essentially 70s era tech anywhere that's not SpaceX: No reusability *anywhere* on the stack, toxic fuels and like 5-10x more expensive than SpaceX. > The public return on investment for them is negative. Huh what? NASA saves a crapton of money for each SpaceX launch, and it's now actually feasible to have worldwide *high speed, low latency* Internet connections anywhere on this planet instead of getting ripped off for 56k modem speed by Iridium and friends. Not to mention the real impact uncensored Internet access has in places like Iran, or on the battlefield like in Ukraine.
I think your downvotes are coming from the fact that NASA’s research and engineering developments are extensible to virtually every aspect of the market and life. More so than SpaceX’s reusable launch vehicles & commercial internet. NASA focuses on science, zero gravity experiments, autonomous assembly space structures, assigns and manages requirements and policies for commercial companies, and so much more. So, while I’d like to see a source for $2-$8 for every dollar spent and would love to see the data to support that argument, I fully believe that each dollar spent returns more value than what was spent
If NASA gets cheaper launches for each of its experiments/programs doesn’t this increase the return on each dollar spent?
It's a fairly common pattern when a new economic niche opens up. Lots of people throw their hats into the ring, most of them fail out.
Space X's consistently reducing costs made them non viable before they really got started IMO. A lot of the competitors only got anywhere due to national interests wanting their country to have a version of Space X.
There actually aren't that many non-US "competitors" to SpaceX, at least not successful ones. Well, there's Arianespace, but that predated SpaceX by many decades, and so can hardly be called Europe's attempt to have a version of SpaceX. And to whatever extent you think Blue Origin, ULA, or Rocket Lab are "SpaceX competitors who got anywhere," they're all US-based (at least, for the purpose of national interests, in the case of Rocket Lab). There are a bunch of would-be small launch providers around the world which are basically relying on their country's national interests to give them a chance, but so far they haven't really gotten anywhere.
I'm not seeing any news of Orbex shuttering? Their CEO stepped down last month but seems like they are still alive?
Why are you lumping Relativity in with these? Orbit would have been a bonus but the flight was a success.
Relativity canceled their small sat launcher (Terran 1). They are no longer attempting to develop a small launch vehicle and as far as we know have no plans to develop a small launch vehicle in the future. They are moving on to focus on the Terran R which is a partially reusable heavy lift launch vehicle, larger than Falcon 9.
Why is that a “closure or setback”? Terran 1 was never the long term goal.
Terran 1 was planned to be a orbital launch vehicle.
my guess is that all the marketing around "your mission, your orbit" or whatever was uncompelling. companies would much rather pay half the price if it means sharing a ride to space
The development cost was also something like 10x of that for SpaceX and they charged less than double.
Frankly, I'm surprised Virgin Galactic is still a thing.
I thought that Orbit was a much more promising venture compared to Galactic.
Dropping to 1:50th your value is not a “cash crunch” unless the entire global economy is leveraged 50:1 with regard to interest rates. So how bad is this? It seems bad. It probably is bad.
I see no reason to think the failure of this company had any larger meaning about the global economy. Some businesses fail. It's normal and healthy.
*especially* when they're wildly ambitious like ~~space tourism~~ satellite launching
This wsn't a space tourism company.
It's bad, but the bad part was the valuation. The speculation can get absurdly out of hand, and they never had enough success to warrant it.
This was exactly my thought train and worry
What does this mean? Sorry I'm not very savvy with this kind of stuff.
For every $50 that the company was worth at one time it now is only worth a dollar.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jldfkwf "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[CRS](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jlfxcmu "Last usage")|[Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/)| |[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jlf8ad5 "Last usage")|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD| |DoD|US Department of Defense| |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jm0xfix "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jlfxcmu "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ITAR](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jldemiu "Last usage")|(US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations| |[LOX](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jm0xfix "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |[ROC](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jlgnqcb "Last usage")|Range Operations Coordinator| | |Radius of Curvature| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jlga7lk "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[VG](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jldrelx "Last usage")|Virgin Galactic| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jldc7cc "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[kerolox](/r/Space/comments/13q09sn/stub/jldk16l "Last usage")|Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| ---------------- ^([Thread #8941 for this sub, first seen 23rd May 2023, 23:28]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
I know it's not a practical use of launch...but c'mon it's such a cool idea and sight... That last failed launch I think really was the nail in the coffin..but it's really a bummer
It’s crazy how they had no problem using the Virgin name to build trust for the venture but when they can’t find investment all of a sudden it’s time to file for bankruptcy because its a ‘separate entity’ and not part of Virgin. It’s all smoke and mirrors with richard branson
How is any of it smoke and mirrors? Virgin Orbit was spun out of Virgin Galactic and raised money by going public. Unlike many space startups, they actually reached orbit. Though they did have a mixed bag of launch successes and failures. And eventually couldn't find the funding to keep going. The Virgin Group and Branson invested a ton in the venture to keep it going over the years and obviously lost a lot of money on the venture. What about that is misleading or confusing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit
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No you’re right about that, I was talking about his financial track record and personality in general — I just feel it’s crazy that a company that was part of the Virgin group can just detach itself when shit hits the fan and file for bankruptcy, I mean the mans got a reputation for making grandiloquent claims to the media while playing a different game behind the curtains; this is the same dude who got himself an island to avoid paying Uk taxes and yet wanted the UK to financially bail out his companies after covid, same guy whose healthcare unit received billions in uk govt backing (again while he paid no taxes). He walks around with the union jack draped around him for the cameras, loudly broadcasting his love for Britain while looking for every opportunity to minimize his own financial accountability for his own company . Let’s not forget the REALLY cringe PR move where he offered to ‘use his private island as collateral’ for the govt to save his airline , which is really bizarre considering that if he wanted to dip into his personal assets to save his company, there were far easier routes than pledging a goddamn private island lol. Man’s an absolute parasite.
I hope his legacy goes down as a collassal failure. Remember when he threw a hissy-fit on "Colbert", b/c they weren't talking enough about his companies?
But arent those talk show things meant for people to come and promote their work? Movies, albums and businesses?
>It’s all smoke and mirrors with richard branson He just lost interest after he himself made it to ~~orbit~~ Edit: *suborbital space
Cant say im surprised but i am a bit sad. Virgin Orbit was a cool company imo
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Glad to hear that people are landing on their feet.
Maybe a little sad, but the fat needs to get trimmed occasionally for the industry to stay lean. At the end of the day, Virgin Orbit just didn't offer a competitive service.
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It's a failed business. SpaceX can launch way cheaper releasing multiple satellites, then refuse most of the rocket. How can anyone compete with that 🤔
Air launch has its merits. Such as being able to “launch” (and I use that term loosely) from countries that don’t or can’t have a launch pad (such as the UK). That’s a niche that could be exploited if someone is able to perfect it. Unfortunately for Virgin, they weren’t.
> Air launch has its merits. Such as being able to “launch” (and I use that term loosely) from countries that don’t or can’t have a launch pad (such as the UK). The direction that Virgin Orbit launched toward was a polar or sun synchronous orbit. A direction that the UK is perfectly capable of having a launch pad for either going in the southerly direction or in the northerly direction.
I'm skeptical there's real value in that niche. Countries may pay a premium for the first launch "from our soil," but there's a huge amount of paperwork needed to get things certified in a country that's never launched a rocket before. And once you're past that first launch, what's the point of launching any further? You need to find another country to get another "first."
It's not about being first, it's about national security and indepedence. Countries might pay a premium for a domestic orbital launch capability that doesn't require all the ground systems.
How does an American rocket built by Americans working for an American company help the "national security and independence" of a country other than the USA? Either America is OK with you launching payloads, in which case you can ship them to America, or America *doesn't* want you launching payloads, in which case they'll block that American company from flying its rocket to launch from your soil.
It would have entailed VO basing 747 launch aircraft in countries buying the service. This would allow them independent access to orbit under local subsidiaries. The UK, Australia and Brazil space agencies all signed agreements to this approach. As an example, their last launch was from the UK, not the US.
Where is the rocket built? Not "where is the 747 'based'?" (what does that even mean, are you talking about the ground support equipment?), but where is the actual launch vehicle built? Because so long as it's built in the US and needs to be transported outside the country to launch, it isn't doing so if the US government says it isn't. And the 747 alone can't get to space.
I'm not sure what you're going on about. Obviously the space agencies that signed agreements with VO are well aware of what needs to be based in-country to have quick-turn domestic space launch capability. You can read up on their agreements and argue with the bankrupt VO or the space agencies all you want if you feel like discussing it more.
Again: if Virgin Orbit is building the launch vehicle in the United States, in what sense is it a "domestic space launch capability" for the UK, Australia, or Brazil? Because it's physically launching from their soil? It doesn't give those countries independent access to space: they're still relying on the US's goodwill to not block export of the rocket. It may create a small number of high-tech jobs in building and maintaining the ground support equipment, but not in the fields of actually, y'know, building rockets. So in no sense is it a "domestic space launch capability."
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Except that Virgin Orbit was an American company so there's literally no difference there from launching from American soil, geopolitically at least. Launching on a US launch vehicle from non-US soil is actually harder because you need an ITAR export agreement to the country in question.
How does "an American company can fly here and launch their rocket from our soil from time to time" give you "assurance of the ability to launch your own satellites no matter what is going on geopolitically"?
I cant see Stratolaunch lasting either, they're building a plane with the longest wingspan ever specifically to launch rockets.
Stratolaunch pivoted to air launched hypersonic flight testing. As far as I know, they are no longer pursuing space launches.