Virgin Galactic Looks on the Bright Side After Launch Abort
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
It was a flight 22 months in the making. But, when it came time for the rubber to meet the oxidizer, the whole thing suddenly flamed out.
The hybrid engine on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity failed to fire properly on Saturday, sending the suborbital rocket plane, pilots David Mackay and C.J. Sturckow and a load of NASA-sponsored experiments into a rapid descent and landing back at Spaceport America, instead of a graceful parabolic arc into suborbital space.
Although the misfire will cause another delay in a flight test program that has already lasted for more than decade, Virgin Galactic emphasized the positives.
“Our flight landed beautifully, with pilots, planes, and spaceship safe, secure, and in excellent shape — the foundation of every successful mission!” CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.
“After being released from its mothership, the spaceship’s onboard computer that monitors the rocket motor lost connection,” Colglazier added. “As designed, this triggered a fail-safe scenario that intentionally halted ignition of the rocket motor. Following this occurrence, our pilots flew back to Spaceport America and landed gracefully as usual.”
Virgin Galactic is a “sky is always blue” kind of company regardless of what was going wrong in or out of public view. Colglazier, whose former employer, Disney, promotes its theme parks as “the happiest place on Earth,” seems to be fitting right in.
It is true that the mishap gave the pilots and ground control team experience in an abort scenario. And it is much better that these failures happen during a flight test so you can avoid them when you have four billionaires paying a quarter million dollars each in the passenger cabin.
Still, the flight was yet another setback for a company that has struggled for more than 16 years to bring commercial suborbital joy rides to the 1 percent. When he unveiled plans for SpaceShipTwo in September 2004, Virgin Galactic Founder Richard Branson promised flights would begin in 2007.
The aborted suborbital flight was to have been the first of three final tests prior to beginning commercial service next year. The flight was originally scheduled to take place in November, but was delayed due to a COVID-19 related shutdown ordered by the New Mexico state government.
Virgin Galactic had planned two additional flight tests for the first quarter of 2021. The first would have four employees in the cabin for the first time to evaluate the passenger experience.
Branson will be a passenger on the final flight test. The original plan was for the company’s founder to fly on the first commercial mission. However, Virgin Galactic felt Branson’s evaluation of the passenger experience would be valuable prior to flying ticket holders.
The plan to complete the flight test program by the end of March has now been scrambled as engineers search for what went wrong. With Christmas less than two weeks away, a repeat of the flight test with NASA experiments could slip into next year.
The aborted flight came nearly 22 months after VSS Unity‘s more recent powered flight. The rocket plane flew the program’s first two suborbital flights in December 2018 and February 2019.
VSS Unity was then taken out of service while its cabin interior was outfitted with seats and improvements were made to its airframe. Virgin Galactic said that VSS Unity emerged from the hangar with an improved flight control system and vertical stabilizers.
VSS Unity subsequently made glide flights from Spaceport America in May and June 2020 to test the modifications before attempting a powered flight on Saturday.
If the current plan holds, Virgin Galactic will complete the test program with a total of 12 powered flights. That number would include five suborbital ones above 50 miles (80.4 km) in altitude that the Federal Aviation Administration considers the boundary of space.
One of those powered flights ended in tragedy when the first SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise, broke up over the Mojave Desert on Oct. 31, 2014. Copilot Mike Alsbury died in the breakup while Pete Siebold parachuted to safety.
Completing the test program with 11 successful powered flights is far from what Virgin Galactic previously told potential investors when it was seeking to raise $260 million in 2008.
Virgin Galactic said that prior to beginning commercial service, the company planned to put SpaceShipTwo through “50 test flights, of which approximately 30 are powered with the rocket motor,” according to a Credit Suisse information memorandum dated December 2008 obtained by Parabolic Arc.
In August 2009, Aabar Investments signed an agreement to invest $280 million in Virgin Galactic for a 31.8 percent share of the company. The company later invested an additional $110 million to boost its share to 37.8 percent.
Aabar is a sovereign wealth fund owned by the Abu Dhabi government. It is charged with investing the nation’s oil wealth.
15 responses to “Virgin Galactic Looks on the Bright Side After Launch Abort”
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They are attempting to staunch the bleeding. The stock price dropped 17% on the news in a single day of trading. That’s not awful considering how much they have gotten it to rise with PR releases about flight suit designs, VR videos of impossibly commodious spaceship interiors, and new tiles on the spaceport terminal bathroom floors. (I made that last one up. There are no new tiles. Don’t buy yet. Wait for the news.) What they don’t want is a further 17% drop on the morrow. Such a development might well be characterized as a plunge, which is not the sort of word Virgin wants associated with their rocket company.
In the event of a plunge, someone at CNBC or WSJ or wherever might be motivated to take a look at the fundamentals, maybe run some numbers, perhaps even turn a gimlet eye toward the company’s operating history. Ruminations of this sort by the business press would be bad. So yes, by all means, let us look at the bright side. Keep looking. Focus. Pay no mind to those black chasms on all sides.
take a look at the fundamentals, maybe run some numbers,
perhaps even turn a gimlet eye toward the company’s operating history.
Might as well be speaking Zapotec, in the current market.
There is serious money to be made with insider trading. It would be interesting to know if any short sales were made prior to this flight and if so, whodunit. Under some conditions, that aborted flight could be quite lucrative.
Yes, given the way this venture has ‘evolved’ over the last few years, you cannot blame people for thinking that dodgy dealings are going on… maybe even a Ponzi scheme?
I think the disconnect in financial journalism (CNBC, WSJ, Seeking Alfalfa, etc.) is that what they consider the “fundamentals” in the valuation of a company has more to do with how the company manipulates its balance sheet and rosy predictions its CEO gives during quarterly conference calls, rather than what those of us with backgrounds in engineering or physics consider “fundamentals.”
So when these financial journalists/analysts/commentators opine through their rose-colored glasses that SPCE is going to be the future of space travel and that they are going to make 5-hour flights from San Francisco to Shanghai a reality in x years, those of us with technical backgrounds just shake our heads and laugh.
VG down another 7% today. But lots of suckers in the market so it’ll probably go back up again in short order.
I think you’re being rather generous, Doug, when you say VG will “complete the test program with a total of 12 powered flights”. Had they flown essentially the same vehicle 12 times I’d feel much more encouraged that this formed a sound basis for declaring the system operational.
I suspect (and hope!) the current design is substantially different than the one that flew the fatal flight in 2014, which means the number of accumulated flights needed to justify their confidence falls way short of 12.
One can hope.
The irony is that Branson would have flown with far fewer tests had there not been the accident. The plan was for two more flights after the fourth one that failed, the final one going to maximum altitude on 1m burn. Then VG would have declared the flight test program complete, taken possession from Scaled and flown Branson in Q1 2015.
The issue was money. Abu Dhabi was pretty impatient by 2014. They inked a deal in 2009 and five years later no space flight. The info memo predicted first powered flights in second half of 2010. First one didn’t take place until April 2013. First three flights didn’t get above 71,000 ft due to engine issues.
By fall 2014, they finally had an engine that worked, but then vehicle was destroyed by something the FAA had flagged as deficient (failure analysis for pilot error). So much focus on the engine, they disregarded the warnings on other things. Set them back six years.
Yes, this should go down as a prime example of ‘brand image’ driving the system engineering process… the contrast with SpaceX’s approach is shocking.
My personal view is that Branson sees space as both ‘cool’ and a means to boost his image, where as Musk sees space as ‘cool’ and a means to progress/save humanity. As a consequence, one measures success by engineering results whereas the other measures it by the amount of press coverage.
Bezos appears to be a mix of both, originally seeming to be like Musk but now seeming to be more like Branson but with a stronger tendency towards the political.
Remember Virgin Brands is all about hype. Sir Richard Brandon doesn’t do many of the startups, he just licenses the rights to use the Virgin name because folks think that it’s cool. And to be honest that is the value of VG to Sir Richard, how a space tourist company makes the other brands seem cool, not the actual revenue from tourists flying. If anything this abort is a remainder that an accident with tourists would devalue the Virgin name so the further you are able to put that risk off the better.
It’s a desperate contest between Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin to see which can hold out from from flying paying passengers on suborbital space flights the longest. Sure, this was an impressive and somewhat unexpected move by VG, but don’t discount Blue!
Snarky!
I have no clue about what is going on at Blue Origin. If it’s desperation, it’s surely quiet desperation. Actually accomplishing things does not seem to be a priority with them. All we can see from the outside is how little they do. We have no sense as to whether they are trying to do more than that.
I was just funnin’ 😀
Connector problems…it’s always connector problems…