Virgin Galactic begins promoting tickets to area once more for $450,000 per seat | Engadget

You now have an opportunity to buy a seat aboard certainly one of Virgin Galactic’s area excursions — offered you possibly can afford to pay $450,000 for it. The firm has reopened ticket gross sales lower than a month after Richard Branson, its founder, flew with different “mission specialists” for Virgin Galactic’s first absolutely crewed spaceflight. It made the announcement alongside its financial results for the second quarter of the yr, whereby it additionally stated that the non-public area company “made meaningful progress towards commencing commercial service in 2022.”

Virgin Galactic is providing you with three client choices to select from. In addition to a single seat that prices virtually half one million, it is also promoting multi-seat packages for teams and providing full-flight purchase outs. The present iteration of the corporate’s VSS Unity spacecraft can seat 4 passengers along with two pilots, so promoting full flights is not out of the realm of chance. Virgin Galactic will prioritize its “significant list of early hand-raisers,” although it can create a follow-on precedence record for patrons curious about reserving future flights.

As CNBC notes, its subsequent scheduled flight could have members of the Italian Air Force onboard. After that, the corporate will take a break till mid-2022 to refurbish VMS Eve, its jet-powered service plane. Since there might be another scheduled check flight after that interval, which means Virgin Galactic is delaying its first official flight for paying astronauts once more. Earlier this yr, the corporate hoped to launch its first business flight in early 2022, however it now advised CNBC that its new goal is someday within the late third quarter of 2022.