When Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy in April, it was clear the commercial launch provider was in serious trouble. Despite successfully putting four payloads into low Earth orbit, the spin-off of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company had struggled to achieve a high enough launch cadence to become profitable, and had recently suffered a highly-publicized failure when their first launch from the UK from the newly-completed Spaceport Cornwall ended in a complete loss of the vehicle.
There was some hope that a buyer would swoop in and save them at the last minute, but now that the bankruptcy auction has spread out the company’s assets among several other players in the commercial launch industry, Virgin Orbital is officially no more. With future launches now off the table, the company’s remaining employees are set to be let go as operations wind down over the coming weeks.
Perhaps the biggest winner is Rocket Lab — for $16 million they secured Virgin Orbit’s primary manufacturing site (including the equipment within), which happens to be less than a mile away from the company’s headquarters in Long Beach, California. Between Rocket Lab’s growing manifest of future launches and the development of their next-generation Neutron rocket, an expansion to their existing facilities at a cut-rate price couldn’t come at a better time.
Stratolaunch Systems, a company which itself has flirted with financial ruin since the 2018 death of founder Paul Allen, purchased Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft Cosmic Girl for $17 million. At first glance this might seem surprising, given the fact that Stratolaunch is already in possession of the far larger and more capable Roc aircraft that was specifically designed for air-launching rockets. But as the company is in the process of relaunching itself as a provider of hypersonic flight test services, they’ll presumably be expanding their operations to include smaller payloads that can be offloaded onto the 747.
Finally, the relatively new startup Launcher has taken possession of Virgin Orbit’s test facility in Mojave, California. For $2.7 million, the company gets a hangar, the equipment inside of it, and rocket engine test stands. Launcher was acquired earlier this year by another startup, Vast, with the merged companies set to work on engines, spacecraft, and eventually, their own private space station. Interestingly Reuters is reporting that Virgin Orbit decided not to sell the engines used in the company’s LauncherOne rocket, and that the company is still debating what they’ll do with the remaining hardware.
With investors tripping over themselves to stake a claim in the rapidly growing New Space market, it’s surprising to see a launch provider with a relatively successful track record go under. Reports before the company filed for bankruptcy estimated they only needed about $200 million to stay afloat and continue operations — a fairly meager sum in the aerospace game.
Then again, with all these agile space startups to chose from, perhaps investors thought that dumping more money into a company struggling to make a relatively outdated launch technology competitive in an era of high-tech reusable rockets simply looked like a losing hand.
Schadenfreude !
I wonder why they were launching from the UK? The southern-most part of the UK is north of the majority of the people in Canada. Not having the additional orbital velocity gained from launching nearer the equator must hurt the launch payload. OK, the UK has some satellite industry, but they could at least assemble everything on the 747 then fly-out to southern Spain or Portugal first.
“Not having the additional orbital velocity gained from launching nearer the equator must hurt the launch payload”
Only for eastward launches. For polar or retrograde launches that’s not a concern, and the high latitude only constrains initial injection inclination (without a plane-change).
because of the Brexit, UK is drifting near the Equator line. They already grow olives in Devon, and will go bananas.
The people in Devon already went bananas.
They were trying to secure funding from the UK government.
They were not launching from UK. They tried to launch from UK just once and failed.
All their sucessful launches (multiple!) were done from Nevada.
“Then again, with all these agile space startups to chose from,ย ”
You misspelled “fragile”!
B^)
I’ve worked in a startup and I’ve spent 7 years inside for… uh… statuatory /something/ charges. Prison time, even if unpleasant, wasn’t as bad as doing vicious cycle of JIRA, meetings and yet another iteration of SCRUM. Really, project managers high on amphetamines turned my life into nightmare with their visions of agile software development hell.
Project managers are not supposed to run agile development… they’re supposed to be a stakeholder from the developers’ perspective. I know it’s often ‘political’ to get the right people to accept and support the development work in the right way. Where I used to work developers were continually bad mouthed to the people in charge, and when they eventually took an interest in what we were doing were surprised to find we were professionals who knew what we were doing.
I was wondering why Branson wasn’t more vertically integrating and being his own customer, but seems that most of his telecom interests have been sold off or are licensed not owned. Also he hasn’t run things directly in a decade.
They got their manufacturing site + equipment for $16 million ?!
That must be the bargain of the year.
I see this as a huge win. peter beck has consistently demonstrated that he knows how to be competitive in the small launcher segment and I suspect he will likely acquire most of virgin orbits staff. branson really screwed the pooch on this since they never really where able to demonstrate a competitive alternative to the rest of what’s available. hell even just rideshare launches basically put the whole of launcherone as not a viable solution.
Just waiting for some rocket hardware to appear on Ebay.
$2.7M for hangar (that’s how it’s spelt), hardware inside of it and the test stands sounds like one hell of a bargain.
Branson’s Lavish Space-Bathhouse Goes Bust!
“For $2.7 million, the company gets a hanger, the equipment inside of it(…)” boy, that’s one expensive hanger :V In all honesty tho, beside the typo pretty neat article :)
Sidenote: maybe it’s only me, but i like those ocasional typos – they really show that the article was written by good old meat-and-bone being rather than by some algorithm – and i feel that’s less and less common these days …
That is one grave that I am happy to dance on.
Why? Are you aware that this Virgin Orbit is not at atll Virgin Galactic? I would understand dancing on a grave of VG but not VO.
VO was for actual satelites and delivered several to actual orbits.
VG is for humans and can’t deliver anything to any orbit because it would need *an order of magnitude more energy* therefore it is only for stupid joyrides which ends after literaly just a few minutes.