Reining in Richard Branson
Virgin Galactic Delays First Commercial Flights to 2015, Space News
“… That timeline represents a delay from statements Branson made as recently as last month. In an interview with USA Today published Aug. 17, he said he expected to be on that first commercial flight by the end of this year. “I’ll be bitterly disappointed if I’m not into space by the end of the year,” he said. A Virgin Galactic spokewoman said that, despite Branson’s comments, the company has no formal schedule for beginning commercial flights. “As we’ve stated in the past, the inaugural commercial flight date will be set by safety and readiness,” Jessica Gilbert said Sept. 11 via email.”
Some may wonder if the first one should have been named “Branson’s Folly” but the guy has shoveled some of his own money in so he does have some skin in the game. The failure rate of early entry companies is always higher the more difficult the technology.
But he is a trailblazer and as such will show everyone that follows what they did right and wrong and each iteration will get better.
There was an article by Patricia Hynes at SpaceNews:
http://www.spacenews.com/ar…
This article makes some really valid points as we move farther down the road on the transition to commercial space.
“Recent research completed for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation captures spaceport operations best practices into an accessible framework. This searchable collection was constructed to help those investigating spaceports see the big picture regarding operations and also to educate new entrants into the industry. It will take time and investment to train good personnel and grow this new industry.”
She also writes what this should lead to:
“We must consider a spaceport — or more importantly, a network of spaceports — as a platform for innovation, not an innovative consumer product. John Pierce with Bell Labs once described the transistor as a platform for innovation. The investment in this small technology allowed us to make giant leaps in human knowledge and spawned the telecommunications and computer industries. The commercial spaceports will kick-start a very different space transportation industry from the one we have today that is focused mostly on launching satellites. Spaceports, as a network, will enable greater supply for humans and cargo to access space. There are eight licensed spaceports, with more, like Brownsville, Texas, coming. When thousands of humans are in the loop we truly will have a fifth transportation industry,”
There are multiple spaceports currently being created to support WhiteKnight 2 and SS2. I believe once commercial crew services and Bigelow Aerospace are in operation and even greater snowball will start rolling downhill.
Well at the very least, several museums will have some fine looking Rutan spaceplanes to display.
Hybrids were never the right answer…..
Wasn’t it Rutan that was behind the push for that hybrid engine?
Nope, it was sold to him…
The appeal of these so-called spaceports is totally lost on me. They offer an up and down ride. Cool, but hardly access to space.
“When thousands of humans are in the loop we truly will have a fifth transportation industry”
Huh? Transportation- to where?
One FAA licensed space port is operating out of Wallops island Virginia and does have access to space. Orbital is launching supply missions to the ISS. With tentative future plans for humans to be launched out of wallops.
They provide a nice backdrop for Dodge’s new 700 horsepower Charger
http://www.drivesrt.com/201…
Exhibit A for showing there is not much of a market for human travel into space outside of NASA.
Edited to clarify:
The market is not just a customer base. You need the money you can make from that customer base to be greater than your expenses. Also you need enough resources to develop that service in the first place.
Facts not in evidence. This delay is technical, not due to lack of customers.
It is true Brian that there is no lack of possible customers. Heck if had a few million to spare I would jump on SS2 faster than you can say space. I apologize that my comment wasn’t clear. My point was that there has been no lack of possible customers since 04 and VG still hasn’t launched commercially. They don’t have the development money that SpaceX has (that comes from NASA and satellite launches). The market is not just a customer base. You need the money you can make from that customer base to be greater than your expenses. Also you need enough resources to develop that service in the first place.
Not really, they just made a bad propulsion choice and stayed with it too long… Andy Beal did the same thing…
That is true Dennis but it backs up the point I was trying to make. Since VG doesn’t have the kind of development money that SpaceX has those bad decisions have much more of an impact.
Joe, I understand what you are saying but there are a couple things to keep in mind. First because it is a both a new sector and industry and early entry entrepreneurs invariably go through a winnowing process, so you can not point to a single company and make broad statements. Early entrants have a lot of development costs that the 2nd and 3rd tier entrants have the hindsight to avoid.
This is not the actual revenue stream we are seeing this is deposits. As it comes into operation the deposits will start declining and full sales price will be the regular revenue stream.
Early entrants are not looking for industry standard ROI (return on investment) they are looking for extra normal profits above the industry average. It is those revenues that typically fuel early expansion.
I agree with most of what you said there. Your economic analysis is quite correct. Hopefully we are on our way to a market not unlike the transcontinental railroads. That said the companies that don’t have funding from NASA (like VG and XCOR) are having difficulty.
There apparently a significant human space market outside of NASA – and a path to implement it for the serious players.
Bigelow, with SpaceX and Boeing, has stated that it is just awaiting space taxi availablity to start signing contracts. Same thing with Space Adventures (more trivially).
As Reuters noted back in January of 2013: “(Bigelow) has preliminary agreements with seven non-U.S. space and research agencies in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates.”
For pricing go here: http://www.bigelowaerospace…
Well, yeah… SpaceX leverages across its services to build its human flight capability. I am sure that Spacex is planning to make a profit with its pricing. Bigelow seems to have priced for profit.
Virgin Galactic appears (less convincingly) to want to build from celebrity and richies suborbital flights added to massive launch campaigns of small satellites, evolving to human orbital flights. Maybe, but I think they will be way too late to the table.
Lastly, SpaceX has definitely benefited from gov awards, but they have repeatedly pointed out that they are in it one way or another. The difference is the time it would take. (Far different then Boeing, who has no skin in the game and will bail unless the taxpayers pay all the freight).
Reining in…unless he’s gone from knighthood to royal status.
It’s “reining,” as Branson presumably has no aspirations to the throne. (Sorry. My inner grammar Nazi breaks out every now and then.)
I’ve come to terms with the reality that my grandchildren will never know that “reign” and “rein” were once two different words; that “breathe” once ended with an “e”; and that up until the early 21st century, there used to be a word called “lose” which was not the same as the word “loose.”
Your right! 🙂
Sorry. It just irritates me.
Just wait until two passengers get into a fight over tilting seat backs and the craft has to land early. 😉