The massive company has created a division called Virgin Galactic, which will be the first publicly-traded company that will focus on space tourism. A deal was made with a public shell company under the name Social Capital Hedosophia. This company will invest $800 million into Virgin Galactic and gain 49 percent of the shares.
The money will be used as a safety net for the new company until it can make a stable profit. The people behind Virgin Galactic are calculating that the company will start to make profits by mid-2021. It will begin flight operations with its first customers one year from now.
This investment has been made during a time when space tourism is just being figured out. Theoretically, all the tools are there when it comes to technology.
But a business plan needs to be constructed that factors in the many details that involve performing these flight operations safely and successfully.
Virgin Galactic To Be The First To Plunge Into Space Tourism
The space tourism game is quite vacant at the moment, but it will not take long until tech giants like SpaceX and Blue Origin will buy-in.
Especially seeing that these companies have lots of experience with space travel, both being contractors for NASA, the US government, and other organizations.
Despite the looming threat of serious competition, Virgin Galactic has said that they have already sold hundreds of tickets to clients that wish to be launched into space. The price for such an experience, being $250.000 per person.
The trip would consist of a 90-minute space trip, most likely in a layer of the atmosphere or perhaps just outside of it. That is if the company has the technology to perform orbital reentry. Obviously, no passengers have had the experience as of yet, seeing that the company’s first test flight took place in December last year.
