Successfully Flying Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic Sells Hundreds Of Tickets To Space

Founder Virgin Galactic Sir Richard Branson bersama kru Unity 22 Mission Specialist. (Sumber: Virgin Galactic)

JAKARTA - Virgin Galactic has sold about 100 tickets since flying its founder Richard Branson into space over the summer, with commercial services expected to begin in late 2022, the company said in its financial report Monday.

The current fare price is US$450,000 per seat, well above the US$200,000-250,000 paid by some 600 customers from 2005 to 2014.

In total, the company has now sold 700 tickets, a spokesman told AFP, citing the Korea Times on Nov. 9.

"We are entering a period of fleet upgrade with a clear roadmap to improve the durability, reliability and predictability of our vehicles in preparation for commercial service next year," CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.

"Demand for space travel is strong, and we've been selling seats much sooner than we planned."

Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic is seeking to cash in on the success of its high-profile test mission in July, which saw Branson defeated by Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos in their billionaire space race.

But since then, the company, which flew out of Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, has faced setbacks.

Sir Richard Branson in space (Source: Virgin Galactic)

The plane was briefly grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), following an investigative report at the New Yorker that found its spacecraft underwent a close call and crashed below designated airspace during a July flight.

The FAA criticized Virgin Galactic for failing to communicate the deviation.

In October, Virgin said it had postponed several months of missions with members of the Italian Air Force, after discovering problems with material strength in its vehicles. Currently, Virgin Galactic is in the process of upgrading its vehicles.

Unlike Blue Origin and SpaceX, its main competitors in the nascent space tourism sector, Virgin Galactic deployed a large transport plane that took off horizontally, reached high altitude, and brought down a rocket-powered spacecraft that then flew into space.

As a public company, Virgin Galactic is also required to be more transparent about its finances.

Separately, the cost of a ticket on Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard rocket, which is capable of leaping about ten minutes into space and back, is unknown, but will likely be much higher.

Meanwhile, the online auction for the first seat sold for $28 million, but the winner delayed their flight.

As for the Seats aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which launches aboard a massive Falcon 9 rocket and is also contracted by NASA to transport astronauts to the ISS, it's likely to cost tens of millions of dollars.

In September, Elon Musk's company took four private tourists on a three-day orbital mission sponsored by online payments billionaire Jared Isaacman.