Richard Branson waves to the crowd after landing at the $209 million spaceport that New Mexican taxpayers are building for him in 2010. From left to right are then-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and then-New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Rick Homans.
The Observer’s Richard Wachman asks an interesting question I’ve been wondering about a lot lately:
Virgin brands: What does Richard Branson really own?
The sprawling business empire that makes up Richard Branson’s Virgin investment group consists of about 400 operations, a tangled web of enterprises owned via a complicated series of offshore trusts and overseas holding companies.
Branson’s finances are difficult to penetrate because of their complexity and opaqueness, with few of his large companies wholly owned by Branson himself. His big-branded firms such as Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Money, Virgin Media and Virgin Trains have other major shareholders. In some cases, he simply licenses the brand to a company that has purchased a subsidiary from him, and these include Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Mobile Australia, Virgin Radio and Virgin Music (now part of EMI). In return, as the licence holder of the Virgin brand, he receives annual or triennial fees that can amount to hundreds of millions over time.
By forging partnerships with cash-rich allies, Branson has established new businesses without depleting the group’s reserves and spending little to establish new ventures in sectors such as mobile telecoms. But initiatives come straight from Branson, who prides himself on his ability to spot a gap in the market. He is not a numbers or a details man and leaves the everyday running of his firms to a group of lieutenants.
Which brings us to Virgin Galactic. And the numbers there are really interesting.
“We do [have a date for beginning commercial operations], but what we don’t do is announce it publicly. And the reason for that is just that I don’t want to put schedule pressure on our engineers. You know, schedule pressure was essentially what caused Challenger….We’re getting close. We hope to get to space next year, and start commercial operations as soon as we can after that. I don’t give out a date. We don’t give out a date outside the company, but we’re getting close.”
– Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides
on The Space Show with David Livingston
Nov. 4, 2011
“Commercial spaceship travel is, I think, about a year away….Hopefully, by next Christmas, myself my daughter and my son will be the first people to go up into space.”
– Sir Richard Branson
in The Hague (see video above)
Nov. 14, 2011
VIRGIN PR – LAS CRUCES, N.M. -Virgin Galactic will take another step toward opening a new era of space travel by formally dedicating its new home at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico on Monday, Oct. 17, 2011. Sir Richard Branson will attend the event, which will include a press conference and dedication ceremony, along with more than 150 future Virgin Galactic astronauts from around the world. The Terminal Hangar Facility will serve as the operating hub for Virgin Galactic and will house up to two WhiteKnightTwos and five SpaceShipTwos, in addition to all of Virgin’s astronaut preparation facilities and mission control.
VG PR – MOJAVE, CA - Virgin Galactic has confirmed an order from NASA for up to three charter flights on its privately-built spacecraft to provide opportunities for engineers, technologists, and scientific researchers to conduct cutting-edge experiments in suborbital space. The agreement calls for NASA to charter a full flight from Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline, and includes options for two additional charter flights. If all options are exercised, the contract value is $4.5 million.
Attenborough: [Launching our first commercial flight] 18 months to two years from now is achievable, but that isn’t to say that we will achieve it. The only thing that will extend that expected timeline is if something comes up during the remainder of the test flight program.
Or so Virgin Galactic’s Commercial Director Stephen Attenborough tells The Wall Street Journal’s Chun Han Wong . The company’s founder, Richard Branson, has been making similar predictions for years now.
TSC PR ― MOJAVE, Calif. ― The Spaceship Company (TSC), the aerospace production joint venture of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, achieved a significant milestone in making commercial space travel a reality with today’s opening of its Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar, or FAITH, at Mojave Air and Space Port. The $8 million, modern, energy-efficient hangar supports the final stages of production for prime customer Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, and will add new jobs to the commercial space industry at spaceports in Mojave and New Mexico.
Advances in payload and transport technology have made it easier than ever for entrepreneurs to launch into space – some for less than even $1M in capital. Entrepreneurs are now exploring opportunities with new rocket launchers, novel uses of affordable small satellites, space tourism, and even space-based power generation and extraterrestrial mining. The space market is already a $280B business.
Virgin Galactic’s first ever Industry Day is a chance for potential suppliers to learn more about the goods and services that we will need to set up operations at Spaceport America in New Mexico and become the world’s first commercial spaceline.
VG PR – To date, all test flights of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo have been piloted by Scaled Composite’s cadre of talented test pilots.
WhiteKnightTwo took to the air for the 72nd time yesterday (8/31/2011); it was a special flight for Virgin Galactic because at the controls, for the very first time, was our own Chief Test pilot, Dave Mackay. Dave joined Virgin Galactic in 2009 following a high-flying aviation career as an RAF test pilot and a Virgin Atlantic Captain.
Virgin Galactic’s Will Pomerantz and XCOR Aerospace’s Khaki McKee both gave updates on their companies’ suborbital vehicles during the recent Houston SpaceUp conference. For the benefit of those who don’t have time to watch the full video above, I’ve summarized their presentations below in a convenient side-by-side table to allow for an easy comparison.
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