Virgin Galactic to become the first space tourism company to go public
Virgin Galactic will soon become the first publicly traded space
tourism company. A public shell company called Social Capital Hedosophia
Holdings Corp will acquire 49 percent of Virgin Galactic which
was founded by Richard Branson in 2004. The deal involves an investment of
roughly $800 million, according to the Wall Street Journal,
and should fund its spaceships until operations can begin turning a profit.
Virgin Galactic projects that it’ll be profitable on an annual
basis by August 2021, and will fly its first customers within a year, reports CNBC.
The investment comes as the nascent space tourism industry is
still trying to work out its business models. Branson’s Virgin Galactic will
eventually compete with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Virgin
Galactic claims to have already sold hundreds of tickets at $250,000 per seat,
but has yet to actually take any of these ticket holders on the planned
90-minute trip to space. Its passenger spaceplane, the VSS Unity, only made it
to space for the first time in December last year.
The transaction is expected to be completed during the second
half of 2019, subject to the usual approvals.