Virgin Orbit to Expands Fleet with 2 More Boeing 747s
Highlights:
- Virgin Orbit signs agreement to secure two new airframes to meet U.S. national security and its allies’ launch demands
- L3Harris will modify one aircraft, aims to deliver Virgin Orbit’s second airborne launcher by 2023
- New cargo configuration expected to enable foreign spaceport launch and transport of rockets, support equipment
LONG BEACH, Calif. and MELBOURNE, Fla., May 10, 2022 (Virgin Orbit PR) — Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB), a leading satellite launch company, has signed an agreement with L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX) to acquire two Boeing 747-400 airframes to support the growing need for U.S. national security and allies’ satellite launch demands.
L3Harris will modify one of the newly acquired aircrafts to serve as an additional airborne launch pad for Virgin Orbit’s small satellite launch service, with delivery expected in 2023. L3Harris will also overhaul the platform with a new cargo configuration, which is expected to allow Virgin Orbit to deliver its rockets and ground support equipment in the same aircraft that will launch from foreign spaceports.
The companies previously collaborated to produce Virgin Orbit’s flagship aircraft “Cosmic Girl,” the first customized 747-400 aircraft to carry and deploy payloads to Low Earth Orbit under Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne program.
“Virgin Orbit is at an exciting juncture in our growth as a company,” said CEO Dan Hart. “As we expand our fleet to serve customers worldwide, we’re enthusiastic to once again partner with L3Harris.”
“It’s inspiring for our team to see L3Harris’ aircraft engineering and modification experience in action on a mission-enabling platform that has performed brilliantly in its space launch role,” said Luke Savoie, President, ISR Systems, L3Harris. “We’re excited to help double Virgin Orbit’s innovative fleet so they can serve their customers with greater capacity and mission flexibility.”
Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl has completed three commercial launches, successfully deploying 26 customer satellites into orbit for multiple commercial, government and military customers. The aircraft, which was previously acquired from Virgin Orbit’s sister company Virgin Atlantic, will continue to fly missions, including the first launch from the United Kingdom expected later this year out of Spaceport Cornwall.
About Virgin Orbit
Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) operates one of the most flexible and responsive space launch systems ever built. Founded by Sir Richard Branson in 2017, the company began commercial service in 2021, and has already delivered commercial, civil, national security, and international satellites into orbit. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rockets are designed and manufactured in Long Beach, California, and are air-launched from a modified 747-400 carrier aircraft that allows Virgin Orbit to operate from locations all over the world in order to best serve each customer’s needs. Learn more at www.virginorbit.com and visit us on LinkedIn, on Twitter @virginorbit, and on Instagram @virgin.orbit.
About L3Harris Technologies
L3Harris Technologies is an agile global aerospace and defense technology innovator, delivering end-to-end solutions that meet customers’ mission-critical needs. The company provides advanced defense and commercial technologies across space, air, land, sea and cyber domains. L3Harris has more than $17 billion in annual revenue and 47,000 employees, with customers in more than 100 countries. L3Harris.com.
29 responses to “Virgin Orbit to Expands Fleet with 2 More Boeing 747s”
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getting some business
They stopped making 747’s right? So they are not “new.”
I think I know where the last four “new” ones are…and no I dont think that they are new. but they will end up being “like new” when they are finished
what is impressive to me is that they have the customers to do this. things are changing with the US military
It is pretty obvious they are doing a replay of the nuclear proliferation of the 60’s and 70’s except with satellites instead of warheads. Getting rich on something that would be almost instantly wiped out in a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. Satellite Armageddon. It would be great if it only killed satellites but it would jack up the chance of a nuclear exchange to almost certainty. I thought we had moved past that as a species. So everything they are saying will work a certain way I would bet is mostly made up- they know they will never get a chance to use it like they say they would.
it strikes me that the US military is coming around to distributed networks on almost all forms of its space ops that are currently in use. BUT it would not take much squinting to see how these launches could turn into offensive ops against other countries satellites
Like I said, we had nukes, then they had nukes, then we both built enough nukes to burn down civilization so neither of us would use them…and it is the same basic mechanism. Except now you can shape your battle plan around actually burning down the entire overhead asset networks of everyone. You think you can win by perfect reconnaissance and surveillance and communications, or you think you can win by destroying all of that and being able to fight effectively with only terrestrial assets.
What is actually going to happen is such a confusing mess that nearly immediate escalation and nuclear war is almost inevitable. They are crazy to weaponize space like this but there is so much money to be made they are going at it without hesitation. The dinosaurs were too stupid to survive and we might be too greedy.
That last part seems a bit of a stretch. How, exactly, would one run an offensive op against an adversary satellite after deploying a load of LEO constellation milsats? Do another burn of the 2nd stage engine to put the whole stage on a collision course?
sorry not clear. this rocket system would make a superb Anti satellite system. there are several “concepts” of how to take out an entire plane of satellites with one shot. I did not mean deploy a satellite and then turn into an ASAT weapon. I regret the misunderstanding 🙂
I don’t know about “superb,” but LauncherOne could definitely be kitted out with some kind of kill vehicle payload. Taking out an entire plane of satellites with a single launch would be a good trick, especially for something with as limited a total payload as LauncherOne. I hope that the “concepts” for doing so don’t center around that old “barrel of B-Bs” chestnut. That stands no chance at all of working.
its a launch into an opposite node …the BB’s are updated. cubesat closure kill vehicles 🙂
Too much to ask that they use the SOFIA 747?
That would seem strong.
They are 747-400’s so that makes them at least fifteen years old. Boeing switched to the stretched 747-800 in 2008 and that is the only version that was produced after that.
Virgin Atlantic retired all of its B747-400’s in 2020 so that will be the most likely source of the new airframes given it is where the current Virgin Orbit B747 served originally. Likely they will pick one for the new conversion and transfer a couple more to Mojave to hold in reserve for future conversions or parts assuming none are located at Mojave now.
Cosmic Girl was originally a Virgin Atlantic plane, but that was not mentioned for these planes and in my opinion is actually unlikely. Most airlines don’t own their airplanes they lease them, or at least most of them, they normally don’t own them. That was the case with Cosmic Girl it was leased, and when it was taken out of passenger service in 2015 Virgin Orbit purchased it from the lease company so that they could convert it for the LauncherOne program.
Most likely the 747-400’s that Virgin Atlantic retired in 2020 went back to the lease company, and being right in the middle of Covid they probably sent them to storage at Mojave or elsewhere to join the many other 747’s that were already there or that were soon to join them. Cargo conversions of retired passenger 747’s have been fewer than expected due to the high cost of doing the conversion, so many used 747-400’s are available. Two years later when Virgin Orbit decided to purchase two more, there would be no advantage to selecting ones that had previously been with Virgin Atlantic, other than for nostalgic or PR reasons.
You forget, Sir Richard is very big on Public Relations…
My thinking is that when shopping for used 747’s there is likely a pretty big difference both in price and condition of the airplanes, and they are of course looking at what will be needed for refurbishment, which could vary for each plane. Thus the final price for each airplane being considered is a combination of the selling price and the refurbishment cost. And also factoring in future predicted maintenance and parts replacement costs, which will also vary for each plane. They will have either inhouse or outside experts who will analyze each plane that they are looking at and crunch the numbers. In the end I think they would lean towards practicality over sentiment. But sure if there are a couple of former VA aircraft that are not necessary the top two choices but are not that far off then they might go with them. But if not then Cosmic Girl will remain the star in the fleet for PR purposes.
Checking at Airline Spotting .com it appears only 4 are left in the United States with the rest of the ones in the U.S. being scrapped. One went to Atlas Air and two are stored Marana Pinal Airpark for Atlas Air. There is a third one at Marana Pinal Airpark that is unspoken for, G-VLIP, 747-443.The fact that three have gone to Atlas Air indicates they were in pretty good shape, not surprising as they were retired early.
https://www.airportspotting…
What Happened to Virgin Atlantic’s 747s?
My first reply attempt got marked as spam, I guess because I included a link to a page on airliners.net. Not sure why your airportspotting link made it and this one didn’t. The link had a list of passenger 747-400’s still flying as of six months ago. Surprising that nearly all of the Virgin Atlantic 747’s have been scrapped, but it looks like that is the case also with most of the 747-400’s from other airlines that went to the boneyards. Makes sense really as they will likely never be sold and the parts are extremely valuable (especially the engines) supporting the passenger and cargo 747-400’s that are still flying. Interestingly Lufthansa had eight 747-400’s in storage and is now starting to put them back into passenger service while they wait for the 777-900. Lufthansa also has nearly twenty passenger 747-800’s in service that it says it plans to fly for many years.
If this message stays in place and doesn’t get marked as spam then I think I may have figured out the problem with the link. In my first reply attempt, when I pasted the link into the message, but hadn’t posted it yet, the link just looked like plain text, not a hyperlink like yours. There isn’t a preview mode in this software so I had no way to know what it would look like once I posted it and whether it would become a clickable link. I then noticed there is an insert link button (in the same area as bold, italic, etc) so I clicked that and it added some html tags to the beginning and end of the link, and assuming that this was the correct way to do it I posted it. After posting it I tried the link and it worked. But within a few minutes the post was marked as spam, and then later the post was deleted.
In my second reply, which didn’t get marked as spam, I only mentioned the name of the website that I was trying to link to, airliners.net. However after posting my second reply I noticed that it converted airliners.net into a working hyperlink (like it is doing in this message), even though I wasn’t trying to make a link I was just saying the name of the website. So now I’m guessing that in your message you just pasted in your link and left it as plain text, and after posting it automatically created a hyperlink. Apparently for some reason the spam bot accepts this, whereas it will bounce a post that uses the built-in link feature.
Anyway here is the link that I was trying to put into my first message:
https://www.airliners.net/f…
Read somewhere that the used 747-400s are the recently retired Japan Air Force One VIP jets.
Which is why the video of him having the ass of his pants ripped off at Palms is so very gratifying:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk…
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
A pretty good analysis. the 747 is not my thing but it strikes me that -400 are not that expensive and there aare a lot of parts
Another big advantage is that the 747 was capable of ferrying a spare engine, which was carried in the exact same location where LauncherOne is now attached. That area of the wing had already been beefed up to carry the load of the spare engine, so that saved the time and money they would have otherwise had to spend if they had to do the reinforcing as part of the modification.
the fifth engine position is an enormous advantage
Interesting where they say they will “overhaul the platform with a new cargo configuration” to carry equipment to remote launch sites. It’s not unusual to convert a former passenger 747 to cargo. They reinforce the floor and install rollers for pallets, and install a cargo door. It won’t be a nose opening door because that feature exists only on some of the 747’s that were built originally as freighters.
However in this case since VO will have a specialized purpose I wonder if they will do the standard cargo conversion for pallets or do something different.
From rendered pictures of the conversions. Don’t think there will be support for pallet support in the main deck. VO is carrying everything on trailers that will be loaded/unloaded with a large scissor lift. Reminds me of how Formula One move hardware to race venues.
That’s why I was wondering what they will do since they likely won’t be carrying pallets and will instead have specific equipment that needs to be loaded and secured. The question is whether they will be able to carry everything they need to launch or will the 747 just supplement other methods to get equipment to the launch site, like ships or other cargo planes.
The Virgin Orbit press release says, “a new cargo configuration, which is expected to allow Virgin Orbit to deliver its rockets and ground support equipment in the same aircraft that will launch from foreign spaceports.”
I am assuming that by “delivering it’s rockets” they just mean carrying it on the launch mount when they travel to wherever. Because I don’t see how they would be able to load it onto the airplane without a nose cargo door, unless it comes apart in small enough pieces to fit through a regular cargo door.
Another article said they will be able to carry two rockets. Don’t know where that came from as it was not mentioned by Virgin Orbit. Only way I know of to do that would be to attach one to the starboard wing, but then they would have to beef up the wing on that side. Unless as I mentioned they are able to carry separate pieces of the rocket that fit through the cargo door, then it would be possible to carry more than one.
There was a nose cargo hatch in the rendered pictures like with the 747 air freighter variants including the Formula One transports.
The launcher One rockets will likely to be on trailers in the main cabin along with a GSE trailer and a mobile clean room trailer. The trailers should be loaded/unloaded through the nose cargo hatch with a heavy duty scissor lift. Cargo handling likely will be using local air freight facilities and services.
External carry of the launcher One rocket severely reduces the performance of the 747 carrier aircraft in range and service ceiling.
If it has a nose door then it was built as a freighter. As far as I know no converted passenger 747’s ever had a nose door installed. If it’s a former freighter then that rules out it being the former Japan VIP planes which were standard 747-400’s.