Branson's Virgin Orbit Files For Bankruptcy After Launch Failure Squeezed Finances (reuters.com) 41
Virgin Orbit, founded by Richard Branson, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday after the satellite launching business struggled to secure long-term funding following a failed launch in January. From a report: The filing comes less than two years after Virgin Orbit first went public at a valuation of roughly $3 billion. But the January mishap left the company scrambling for new funding and forced it to halt operations. "We believe that the Chapter 11 process represents the best path forward to identify and finalize an efficient and value-maximizing sale," Virgin Orbit Chief Executive Dan Hart said in a statement. The company, which was spun off from space tourism firm Virgin Galactic in 2017, sends satellites into orbit using rockets launched from a modified Boeing 747 plane. The Long Beach, California-based company lodged the filing seeking a sale of its assets in a Delaware court days after announcing the layoff of roughly 85% of its 750 employees. Virgin Orbit listed assets of about $243 million and total debt at $153.5 million as of Sept. 30. The company went public in December 2021 through a blank-check merger, raising $255 million less than expected.
Damn, I was looking forward to risking my life (Score:3)
Why can't we just... (Score:1)
...build a platform like 50 miles high? Take an elevator up, then just jump into space.
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...build a platform like 50 miles high? Take an elevator up, then just jump into space.
Then fall down... [xkcd.com]
To avoid falling back into the atmosphere, you have to go sideways really, really fast.
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This is Branson's low earth satellite launch service that has gone bankrupt. I'm sure that Virgin Galactic (and Blue Origin et al) will be happy to charge rich assholes $$$$$ for the exciting opportunity to be blown to pieces or mushed into an identifiable paste on board one of their rockets.
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Unfortunately they've hardly managed to attempt to kill any rich arseholes yet. It looks more like some sort of scam than an actual rocket company, but I can't figure out what Branson's angle is.
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Virgin Galactic was founded 20 years ago and has managed 3 sub-orbital flights. Unfortunately they've hardly managed to attempt to kill any rich arseholes yet. It looks more like some sort of scam than an actual rocket company, but I can't figure out what Branson's angle is.
I don't know that he has an angle. I won't claim I study the guy or anything, but having relatives that sorta/kinda know him gives me the perspective that he's a guy with a LOT of money, a little bit of time to think about what to do with that money, and a tiny touch of "me too"ism when it comes to the other ultra-wealthy folks. So, Musk and Bezos both wanna play in space? ME TOO! ME TOO! Except, he's both a bit of a control freak, not big on letting others run the show, and a bit scattered with his attenti
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Branson was at it longer than those other guys so I think some credit is due there. Also that he has history for indulging his passions in breaking records, crossing the Atlantic, ballooning etc. That said, I won't be sad if these space tourism efforts fail miserably.
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I don't think it's a scam. They've developed a "viable" (*) space jaunt technology (* viable == putting people just about into space). But this sort of space tourism is just a fundamentally terrible idea. If it takes some billionaires getting smushed for these companies to go titsup then it's fine by me.
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I just can't believe that in 20 years he's poured all that money into attempting to get people into orbit and is yet to manage it.
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Here's the difference between Galactic and Orbit (Score:1)
I made the same mistake last story of thinking this was the passenger company Virgin Galactic.
This was just the company spun of in 2017, with the aim of providing launch craft for small satellites [space.com].
Not sure how Virgin Galactic is fairing...
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Fairing is a rocket-related word, but you want faring here.
Or did I. :-)
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Re:Damn, I was looking forward to risking my life (Score:5, Funny)
Three words: Zero G sex!
Unfortunately the length of time in zero G is only four minutes so... no, wait, you should be good.
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Marriage?
1 billionaire down (Score:2)
2 billionaires left.
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Musk. Bezos hasn't put anything in orbit yet.
And even when he does, New Glenn is going to be in the same very general ballpark as Falcon Heavy. With very good odds the insanely huge Starship stack will already have made it to orbit.
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Made it to orbit carrying a production model cybertruck, though?
That won't be happening anytime soon.
How much did Branson lose (Score:2)
The wages of conventional wisdom (Score:5, Interesting)
SpaceX built up based on a "break things fast then fix them" methodology which was widely derided by many observers. If it was ever a valid development strategy it certainly wouldn't be for something as risky and failure-intolerant as space travel.
They have a youtube video of all their "failures," one after another. It is pretty amusing to watch. But to them, they weren't failures as such. Each was an opportunity to learn something that they would not have learned with the traditional approach of years of simulations and calculations.
This seems to be what sunk VO. I don't know the full story there but I suspect that they built up an expectation of doing it how NASA did it way-back-when and when they couldn't, it was a "failure." No more funding for you, you failure. Can anyone here say whether I have it right or not?
Re:The wages of conventional wisdom (Score:5, Informative)
The thing worked, they had successful launches, they just ran out of money, and apparently their future sales didn't look good enough to fund further operations. I'm curious what happens now with their subsidiary VOX and its Space Force contract which appears partially fulfilled as of last year.
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I take a broader view. "Space" is ultimately something we'll succeed at as a country, if not even more broadly as a species. I applaud everyone who makes a serious effort to launch something into space.
As far as SpaceX goes, people underestimate the degree to which Musk is driven by belief and willing to gamble heavily on that belief. Every time I hear a conspiracy theory about him, I counter with... No, Elon REALLY does believe the only hope for humanity is to colonize Mars and beyond. He's willing to
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As far as SpaceX goes, people underestimate the degree to which Musk is driven by belief and willing to gamble heavily on that belief.
I don't under-estimate it, but call it obsession.
Every time I hear a conspiracy theory about him, I counter with... No, Elon REALLY does believe the only hope for humanity is to colonize Mars and beyond.
The Mars project is the conspiracy, in plain sight.
He's willing to risk his fortune, sacrifice ALL of his time, energy, health, and sanity to do it.
His sanity has already gone.
Musk and SpaceX can afford his "do or bust" approach simply because investors continue to throw money at him, however colossal the cock-up he makes. His fans regard him as the new Messiah rather than the super-salesman he really is.
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Don't underestimate the value of sales in tech.
History is chock full of great ideas and wonderful new tech that wasn't well sold and the companies died.
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You are correct.
They HAD to be successful to get any further funding due to SpaceXs run-away success.
And your point on their approach is poignant, speed seems to have been a key issue, and maybe "trying/blowing things up" progress would have been enough, hard to say (depends on how it goes).
I'm not sure if we can get a true competitor to SpaceX, they are just too good compared to anything else on Earth. They have 22 successful launches in 2023 so far (out of 50 so far total, SpaceX is 22-0, the rest of Ear
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SpaceX built up based on a "break things fast then fix them" methodology which was widely derided by many observers.
I do remind you that, when SpaceX started, that wasn't their philosophy. Elon Musk's stated philosophy was "we will do things right the first time, and achieve 99.9% reliability right from the start, because we designed reliability in from the very beginning."
After three successive failures with their first rocket, Elon changed his story.
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I'm not a musk fanboy but I'd say it's smart to change your strategy is your first plan fails so hard. That's a sign of intelligence and good management. Not the egomaniac he's accused of being. He probably is but that's a sign of the opposite.
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They have a youtube video of all their "failures," one after another. It is pretty amusing to watch. But to them, they weren't failures as such. Each was an opportunity to learn something that they would not have learned with the traditional approach of years of simulations and calculations.
Like the time they tried to land one of their rockets right next to another rocket set to launch at a future date, ensuring that if there was a failure (which there was), it would cause double the damage. Heaven forbid they move the rockets farther away from each other to minimize the possibility of nearly undetectable ricochet damage. I mean, this is common sense!
From my perspective, Space-X was just arrogant cowboyism, taking a wide variety of risks that were completely avoidable, trying to catch-up wit
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Nothing succeeds like success. It's hard to argue against winning.
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SpaceX was able to do that because they had Musk funding them from his other ventures. Bezos could do it for Blue Origin I guess, but I don't think Branson was rich enough or still invested in enough other businesses to manage. He sold off most of his Virgin brands.
One could say (Score:4, Funny)
Virgin is officially fucked.
Quitter (Score:2)
But, (Score:1)
filling out all those bankruptcy forms takes rocket science.
Correction (Score:4, Funny)
The company, which was spun off from space tourism firm Virgin Galactic in 2017, sends satellites into orbit using rockets launched from a modified Boeing 747 plane.
No, actually it doesn't. That's the problem.
Correction to Correction (Score:3)
The company, which was spun off from space tourism firm Virgin Galactic in 2017, sends satellites into orbit using rockets launched from a modified Boeing 747 plane.
No, actually it doesn't. That's the problem.
Out of Virgin Orbit's six launch attempts, four have been successful. So, it puts satellites into orbit more often than it fails.
Turns out that wasn't good enough
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It did, but now it doesn't.
That's unfortunate actually, it was a good concept and looked like it could have been perfected if they didn't run out of money, perhaps if investors bought a few less silly monkey pictures.