Virgin Galactic Makes Test Flight, Sells Stake To Abu Dhabi, Mulls IPO
Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s consumer space flight program, is epic enough to make even the biggest cosmo-sceptic start pointing their finger and jump up and down like a child faced with a large animal/ice cream/balloon. The design is sleek, the environmental credentials are halfway sound, we can start using words like “spaceport” legitimately – it’s all so exciting that instead of scoffing you find yourself earnestly nodding along when Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic’s president, starts saying things like “Access to space really does matter for the future of mankind”.
In fact it’s so exciting that if we weren’t wretchedly poor we’d all start signing up for it; meanwhile people with money are chucking it at Branson full of the aforementioned childish excitement. There’s the passangers, each of whom have paid $200,000 to go into space (and who one woman in the promotional video hilariously describes as coming from “all sorts of different backgrounds” – different yet uniformly loaded, obv). But also spending is the reliably cash-happy lot over in the Middle Eastern emirates, with the Abu Dhabi state-controlled investment company Aabar Investments taking a 32% stake in the company yesterday. The company is chaired by Sheikh Mansour, a man not known for scrimping on his hobbies – maybe he’ll be signing up for some zero-gravity action himself, just to properly survey his ever-spreading empire.
Whitehorn made their $280m contribution sound pretty big news: “It completely funds the project through to commerciality”, he said; Branson is also apparently mooting a stock market floatation for the company to push the funding through. Whitehorn also cited Abu Dhabi’s “strong ambitions in developing science within the emirate” – what with this and their massive push on alternative energy with the Masdar initiative, Abu Dhabi is really starting to think outside the hydrocarbon box. Their investment will go towards a side element of the program, the launching of satellites, which could provide Virgin Galactic with a revenue stream outside of passenger tickets and therefore Aabar with a more diverse investment. Nevertheless, Virgin Galactic is still a niche brand, and given its riskiness when factoring in the new technology and small customer base, it’s a risky investment.
Meanwhile yesterday also saw Branson jolly about for the first time in White Knight Two at an airshow in the States; its the mothership that carries the spacecraft towards space. It’s like Branson and co have even thought about the poetic rhythm of the mission, calibrating it to be as emotionally and visually stirring as possible. The mothership drifts up, lets the spaceship fall for a couple of seconds before its single booster engine blasts it at the heavens – Hollywood couldn’t make a more satisfying spectacle if it tried. Console yourself by attacking the massive hubris of rich people polluting the environment to provide themselves with an elite experience, boo at the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on entertainment for a few hundred people – but admit it, you really want a go.
Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Sci-tech | July 29, 2009 1:30PM |