Photo: Virgin Galactic
If there is one field of human activity that is even more dynamic than the auto industry these days, then that’s space exploration. Emerging companies and tech are everywhere, great plans for the future are being drafted, and partnerships for the ages signed.
In this last category falls this week’s team-up between Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and the company that made the arrival of the first private crew on the International Space Station (ISS) possible, Axiom Space.
For the Ax-1 mission to the ISS, Axiom used a SpaceX Crew Dragon to take its people up there, but there are other providers of trips to space that could suit other tasks better.
For an upcoming microgravity research project, whose details were not disclosed, Axiom will use a Virgin Galactic spaceship. The flight, scheduled for sometime next year, will also carry with it an Axiom Space astronaut as part of a training routine prior to a later trip to the ISS. The exact details of the flight were not announced.
With this mission, Virgin once again falls under the spotlight this week. It first did that when it announced the partner companies that it’ll help it assemble a new family of spaceships for multiple trips to orbit.
Then, when it reported the financial results for the third quarter, a net loss of $146 million – the number is about three times higher than the loss reported for the same period of last year ($46 million).
Although bleeding money is understandable, given how Virgin Galactic is not yet operating expensive, short commercial flights to the edge of space, it remains to be seen for how long the company will be able to support that.
The current business plan calls for the Delta-class spaceships to fly paying customers up there no sooner than 2026.
For the Ax-1 mission to the ISS, Axiom used a SpaceX Crew Dragon to take its people up there, but there are other providers of trips to space that could suit other tasks better.
For an upcoming microgravity research project, whose details were not disclosed, Axiom will use a Virgin Galactic spaceship. The flight, scheduled for sometime next year, will also carry with it an Axiom Space astronaut as part of a training routine prior to a later trip to the ISS. The exact details of the flight were not announced.
With this mission, Virgin once again falls under the spotlight this week. It first did that when it announced the partner companies that it’ll help it assemble a new family of spaceships for multiple trips to orbit.
Then, when it reported the financial results for the third quarter, a net loss of $146 million – the number is about three times higher than the loss reported for the same period of last year ($46 million).
Although bleeding money is understandable, given how Virgin Galactic is not yet operating expensive, short commercial flights to the edge of space, it remains to be seen for how long the company will be able to support that.
The current business plan calls for the Delta-class spaceships to fly paying customers up there no sooner than 2026.
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