By: Julia Seibert
On a sunny July day in 2021, in the heart of the New Mexico desert, British billionaire Richard Branson stood grinning from ear to ear. He was fresh back from taking his company Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane Unity for a spin at the edge of space – and he’d beaten his rival, fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, to it. The victory was sweet – but not as sweet as the thousands of customers Branson hoped would follow him to space, paying several hundred thousand bucks a head.
Three years on, that sort of customer base has yet to materialize for both Branson’s Unity flights and Bezos’s company Blue Origin’s suborbital flights on its New Shepard rocket. But both companies still have faith in their vision: opening space up to more people (that is, if you can afford a ticket). With both companies’ futures at a crossroads, their plans are remarkably different; while Blue is expanding its reach beyond passenger flights, angling for juicy government contracts, Virgin is doubling down on tourism. But will their visions ever be more than dreams?
Significance of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin In Space Industry
Virgin Galactic, the world’s first self-described ‘spaceliner’, offers one service, and one service only: flying you to the edge of space and back. A flight lasts around 90 minutes. It begins with a carrier plane hauling the spaceplane to a certain altitude; then, the spaceplane separates and blasts off to about 80 kilometers in altitude. Here, passengers experience about six minutes of weightlessness before the spaceplane comes back down and lands on a runway.
Virgin has flown a handful of tourism missions since Branson’s inaugural flight, reaching an almost-monthly streak in 2023. But the company’s spaceplane Unity has flown its last flight in June 2024, and there’s now an at least two-year wait until the new vehicle, Delta, is ready to fly. Still, throughout its lifetime, Unity managed to send people to (albeit suborbital) space at around $450,000 a pop, which, while expensive, is nowhere near the tens of millions you’d need to cough up for a trip to orbit, not to mention the ISS. So yes, Virgin’s customers are pretty loaded – but most of the roughly 30 passengers it’s flown so far probably wouldn’t have been able to access space any other way. This concept is the crux of the company’s business model. But while the company has arguably lowered the access barrier to space, that barrier is set to become a little higher again, with ticket prices recently raised to $600,000.
Blue’s tourism service is different. Instead of a spaceplane, it flies tourists on its 18-meter tall New Shepard rocket, which consists of a booster and capsule. The rocket blasts off to an altitude of about 75 kilometers, where the two components separate. The capsule keeps ascending until it reaches a peak altitude of over 100 kilometers, which is above the internationally recognized boundary of space (as Blue pointed out in a shady infographic leading up to its race with Virgin). Meanwhile, the booster descends and lands itself. Aboard the capsule, passengers experience three to four minutes of weightlessness before they too descend and land via parachute. The whole thing lasts around ten minutes, with a ticket costing at least $1 million (though exact prices vary according to the passenger and are often kept mum).
Recently, Blue hasn’t been flying New Shepard nearly as much as Virgin’s Unity; the rocket launched only twice in the last year following a booster failure during an uncrewed flight in September 2022. Still, Blue’s been busy behind the scenes. As it expands its reach beyond tourism, the company is involved in seemingly every space niche you can think of. Rockets, space stations, lunar landers, a multipurpose spacecraft, even a system of turning lunar dust into solar cells… the list goes on. Many of these projects are still in the blueprints, and Blue keeps relatively quiet about the details. Still, it’s beginning to make an impact; in January 2024, Blue’s BE-4 rocket engines made their debut on ULA’s Vulcan rocket, and Blue’s own New Glenn rocket is set for a 2024 maiden flight.
Virgin Galactic vs Blue Origin: Founding Stories and Founders’ Philosophies
Virgin Galactic: Billionaire Branson, who’d made his fortune through founding the Virgin Group conglomerate, has always been a bit of a daredevil. He harbors a passion for attempting to break world records, and has flown across the world in hot air balloons, broke a record for crossing the English channel in an amphibious vehicle, and crossed the Atlantic in a ship (which capsized on his first attempt). In the early 2000s, Branson turned his attention to space, which he said was ‘the greatest adventure of all’. His love for space came from watching the moon landing, but he found there was no way for him to reach it. ‘I really did think that myself and many other young people would one day be able to go into space. I waited and I waited and waited for that opportunity and it never came,’ he says in a promotional video for Virgin.
While Branson was flying his balloons in the 80s, ace engineer Burt Rutan founded his aerospace company Scaled Composites. Though he’d only built airplanes so far, Rutan decided to try his hand at a spaceplane after hearing about the Ansari X Prize: $10 million to the first non-governmental entity to launch a spacecraft twice in two weeks. Rutan, who was already inspired to increase access to space through tourism, got to work; the resulting SpaceShipOne craft, a spaceplane launched from a carrier plane called White Knight, emerged victorious.
This caught Branson’s attention, and in 2004 he announced that he would sell flights aboard the craft through his new company Virgin Galactic. Virgin and Scaled created a joint venture – the Spaceship Company – to build the hardware. But progress was slow and deadly, with three Scaled employees killed in a 2008 engine test. After SpaceShipTwo was unveiled in 2009 and testing commenced, the company continued to be plagued with problems; the vehicle had issues, the company was far behind schedule, customers were angry, and a 2014 test flight failure of the spacecraft Enterprise killed its pilot. The replacement, Unity, was revealed in 2016, but countless more delays resulted in the first commercial service flight taking place in 2023.
Blue Origin: Though his company ended up swimming in the same pond as Virgin, Bezos’s vision for Blue is vastly different. The concept behind the company is to allow millions of people to live and work in space to benefit Earth. Polluting industries would be moved to space to preserve Earth’s environment; eventually, Bezos envisions trillions living aboard cylindrical space stations that mimic Earth’s habitat. For that, he’s going to need cheap rockets, space stations, and the use of in-space resources – all things Blue is working on.
But the company has taken a while to get its skates on. The company was founded in 2000 when founder Bezos had begun raking in billions from Amazon and could afford to pursue his lifelong interest in space. Not much is known about the company’s early years, which are veiled in secrecy. Its first rocket, the tiny Goddard, launched in 2006, and the company began work on New Shepard in 2011. In the meantime, Bezos had become so rich that he kept the company ticking by means of yearly infusions of $1 billion (as reported by Ars Technica). In 2016, Blue announced New Glenn – akin to a heavier-lift version of the prolific SpaceX Falcon 9 – and began crewed flights on Shepard in July 2021 (with Bezos flying just a week after Branson’s trip).
While Blue is beginning to get in on the industry action – most recently winning its first Space Force contract with New Glenn – its trademark snail-pace development has yet to catch up. Blue’s development philosophy has long been ‘Gradatim Ferociter’ – step by step, ferociously. It’s so central to Blue’s concept that it features on the company’s coat of arms and the cowboy boots Bezos wore on his trip on Shepard (as reported by SpaceNews). But in the current space industry dominated by SpaceX – who seem to have dropped the ‘gradatim’ bit – Blue has been left in the dust. Now, as Bezos describes, the company’s priority is a sense of urgency.
The Role in Space Exploration and Tourism
Virgin Galactic: Virgin is all about space tourism. The company doesn’t seem to have any immediate ambitions to conquer the space industry like Blue; it’s focusing on suborbital spaceplane flights which, as Rutan had described, are a happy medium between orbital flights and exorbitant costs. In addition to flying tourists, though, Virgin’s service has been used as a space research and training platform. Several scientists, including Turkish astronaut Tuva Cihangir Atasever, have used the service, and the plane has also carried some autonomous experiments. This allows researchers to run experiments in microgravity without spending a few million bucks for a trip to the ISS. But while it focuses on joyrides and science trips for now, Virgin might have other plans up its sleeve; in 2020, the company embarked on a partnership with NASA to explore supersonic suborbital transport on Earth, like an airliner.
Blue Origin: At the moment, Blue is mostly known for its short tourism flights which, like Virgin’s, have been used for science as well. But Blue wants more. It’s already under contract with NASA to land people on the moon for the agency’s third human landing; its space station Orbital Reef, described as a business park in space, is also backed by NASA as a possible commercial successor to the ISS. Then there’s the company’s new rocket New Glenn, which is launching a NASA Mars mission on its maiden flight and is designed to compete with SpaceX’s rockets. In general, most of Blue’s grand exploratory plans have yet to make their debut – only time will tell what role they will play.
Read also: The Benefits Of Space Exploration And Its Importance
Technological Innovations and Contributions
Virgin Galactic: Virgin’s top innovation is its carrier plane/spaceplane duo, VMS Eve and VSS Unity. Unity’s wings feature a unique system known as feathering that allows the vehicle to switch between plane and capsule mode during flight. As explained by the company, both planes and capsules feature some benefits; spaceplanes offer a smooth ride and can land on a runway, while capsules are much less finicky when it comes to reentering the atmosphere. Since Virgin flies suborbital and doesn’t encounter the intense speeds and heat of orbital reentry, a spaceplane does the job – but it can flip its wings backwards during descent to help with heat distribution. When the atmosphere becomes thick enough, the wings come back out and allow the plane to land.
Blue Origin: You wouldn’t have guessed it today, but Blue beat SpaceX to propulsively landing its boosters for the first time. Of course, Blue doesn’t fly as often nor as far as SpaceX, but it shows that the company has experience with reusability that it can apply to future rockets. But again, Blue’s technological contributions are still mostly unproven. One exception is Blue Alchemist: a method of using lunar soil, or regolith, to make solar cells for future lunar bases. This is done through molten regolith electrolysis, during which an electric current running through the dust separates materials required for the cells: silicon, iron, and aluminum (plus oxygen, which is a byproduct). Blue claims that other byproducts can be used to create a glass cover for the cells, and that no ‘special substances’ from Earth are needed.
Blue Origin vs Virgin Galactic: Business Models and Funding
Virgin Galactic: Virgin makes all its money from crewed flights; this includes the payments for the tickets themselves as well as membership fees for its Future Astronaut club. The company also has a pot of cash of $867 million as of March 2024; Branson chose not to top it up at the end of last year, claiming that the company had enough to keep it going until the next vehicle was ready.
But Virgin is hemorrhaging cash. It’s losing over $100 million a quarter (recently laying off 18% of staff to save money) and is now one spaceplane short of resuming business. Even if Unity were working, the situation looks dire; Virgin only brought in $7 million in revenue in 2023 – with a $502 million net loss. The company’s stocks are also at an all-time low. Still, Virgin has hope; Delta is planned to fly eight times a month and carry six passengers (two more than Unity). With ticket prices upped to $600,000, Virgin aims to fly up to 400 missions a year – but until then, it needs to survive.
Blue Origin: As it’s private (not publicly traded like Virgin) and generally on the secretive side, Blue’s financials are a little fuzzy. What’s clear is that it’s not making much money; besides the Vulcan launch and the two New Shephard flights, the company hasn’t been very active on the surface. Under it, its countless space projects are bound to have run up a sizeable bill. But with Bezos’s wealth and dedication to the company, Blue’s unlikely to go under anytime soon.
Plus, the company has already won a fair few contracts. Blue got $3.4 billion for the human lunar lander from NASA; the agency also paid $172 million so far for Orbital Reef and about $20 million for launching two smallsats to Mars atop New Glenn. Blue was also recently selected to compete for Space Force launches – worth $5.6 billion in total – alongside SpaceX and ULA.
Read also: Fueling Financial Rockets: How Does SpaceX Make Money
Public Perception and Media Presence
Both participants of the billionaire space race, Virgin and Blue received their fair share of public ridicule; after all, it’s almost too easy to poke fun at the image of billionaires building rockets and leaving the planet to burn. Unsurprisingly, the companies have been eager to distance themselves from this branding, and both stress the apparent benefits they offer humanity in their PR.
Virgin Galactic: Virgin plays up the angle of the wonders of spaceflight, its powerful impact on one’s perspective of the Earth, and how, thanks to its service, you too can experience it. This is highly publicized on social media; Virgin’s pages are laden with sleek neon visuals, cinematic cuts of missions and progress, and tearjerking, up-close-and-personal tales from its passengers. Still, this wasn’t enough to deter critics, who were quick to point out that renewing your appreciation of Earth with Virgin’s service creates 4.5 metric tons of CO2 per person – more than the average person’s annual carbon footprint.
Blue Origin: Blue takes a slightly different approach and puts Earth’s environment at the forefront of its marketing. It’s also invested in some clever PR with some of its passengers, who have included William Shatner as well as Wally Funk, a then-82-year-old aerospace legend and one of the first women trained as astronauts. Blue makes sure you know all this from looking at its social media, though this is slightly more reserved than Virgin’s. However, Blue doesn’t hold back with its infamous passive aggressive infographics, which it has used to throw shade on rivals like Virgin and SpaceX when competition got hot. Blue is now known for its cheek – even if it hasn’t yet rolled out the hardware to back it up.
Read also: SpaceX Competitors And Similar Companies
Challenges and Controversies
Virgin Galactic: The deadly development process, financial difficulties, criticisms over environmental hypocrisy, and its uncertain future are just a few challenges Virgin has to deal with; the company also seems to be a lawsuit magnet. One of these came along in December 2021 following Branson’s ride, when the company’s own investors claimed that issues with the allegedly still-prototypical Eve and Unity were not yet resolved. According to the lawsuit, the vehicles ‘were so rickety that every flight could be their last… a Virgin Galactic employee said the wings looked like spiderwebs or cracked eggshells’ (as reported by The Guardian). Virgin is also involved in a legal battle against Boeing, who claimed Virgin has not come up with the $25 million it owed for development of a new mothership – and that it kept trade secrets to boot. Virgin has now countersued, claiming Boeing’s work on the new craft was ‘shoddy and incomplete’ (as reported by SpaceNews).
Blue Origin: Blue’s racked up some controversies of its own, but its biggest would be the lawsuit it filed against NASA when it didn’t win its lunar lander contract straight away. In April 2021, a cash-strapped NASA picked SpaceX’s lander alone over Blue’s and Dynetics’; the winning design was half the price of Blue’s. The losers first tried to complain to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). When that failed, Blue sued NASA, halting development of the chosen design for months until the lawsuit was tossed out.
Future Plans and Predictions for Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin
Virgin Galactic: At first glance, Virgin’s plan seems easy as pie; use the next two years to get two pairs of its newest vehicles ready, and then take over the world of suborbital spaceflight. To do that, it envisions multiple spaceports, a whole fleet of vehicles capable of flying every few days, and hundreds of flights a year. But while the numbers might add up nicely on paper, whether Virgin can actually produce them is another question. For one thing, there’s the development process to think about; even for fast-moving companies like SpaceX, this can take much longer than two years. It also needs to get the vehicles tested and approved for human flight: a regulatory nightmare that could slap on another significant chunk of time. Then there’s the flights themselves, which the current industry – centered largely around governmental and defense tech – isn’t primed for. Though the company claims to have interest from almost a thousand potential customers, can Virgin rely on them to show up when the time comes – and if they do, will Virgin be ready?
Blue Origin: Now that it got its contract for the Artemis program’s planned third human landing, Blue has its work cut out for it. In the coming years, it must not only prove the lander’s viability, but also get New Glenn, the rocket it was designed for, flying. The company also needs to deliver on all those other projects slated to make their debut this decade. More elusive than many of its peers, the state of Blue’s progress is difficult to gauge, but recent signs of life (such as mockups of New Glenn and the lander, its resumed New Shephard flights, and the success of the BE-4s) suggest that the company is ramping things up. If it succeeds in its plans, it could prove capable of playing with the big boys like SpaceX and ULA. But while Blue might have the groundworks of a successful space company – not least a billionaire owner – it now needs to get its hands dirty.
Broadening the Comparison: Virgin Galactic vs Blue Origin vs SpaceX
In a way, space is the perfect billionaire’s playground; it’s exciting, it’s damned expensive, and it might well play a significant part in humanity’s future. What better way to secure one’s role in history than begin building it? But as seen with Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, doing so involves more than just chucking money at some nuts and bolts. It needs a plan, and a good one – one that is as practical as it is ambitious. SpaceX, by comparison, has such a plan, and its success speaks for itself. But Blue and Virgins’ visions of hundreds, thousands, millions of people in space to life depend on whether the companies can build not just a dream, but a business.
Read also: SpaceX Vs Blue Origin – A Detailed Comparison In 2024
Share this article:
