Posted on 07/16/2022 11:39:59 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Suborbital space tourism provider Virgin Galactic announced Thursday (July 14) that it will build its next-generation Delta class space planes at a manufacturing facility in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix.
The company, which just last week announced a deal to build a new set of carrier planes for the Delta spaceships, said that the newly leased facility could produce up to six spaceships a year and will bring hundreds of jobs to the area.
Construction is underway on the facility, which is adjacent to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, and it should be ready to go in 2023, Virgin Galactic said in a statement on Thursday(opens in new tab).
Virgin Galactic aims to ultimately launch up to 400 suborbital missions per year using two new motherships and its growing fleet of Delta space planes. The new planes are expected to begin service in 2025 with "revenue payload flights," Virgin Galactic said previously. The company has also said the Delta-class space planes should be ready to start flying paying customers in 2026.
Thursday's announcement came a few days after the first anniversary of Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed spaceflight, which occurred on July 11, 2021. That mission flew with founder Richard Branson on board Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane, which was hauled aloft by the carrier aircraft VMS Eve.
Virgin Galactic hasn't flown a mission since then, however.
A ticket to fly with Virgin Galactic currently costs $450,000, up from a pre-Branson-flight level of $250,000.
Unlike a straight rocket ride to space, Virgin Galactic air-launches its customers. A carrier aircraft carries a space plane aloft under its wings, until the pair reach an altitude of roughly 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). The space plane then drops free and turns on its onboard rocket motor to fly to suborbital space.
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Spacely Sprockets, where George Jetson works...
Where’s my robot maid? We were promised robot maids.
Quite the hub now in Mesa-Tempe-Chandler.
Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Honeywell (old Garrett), Viasat, Intel...the list keeps growing for aerospace.
LA is so not the place to build American anything...
Suborbital , the spaceship that just couldn’t make it
I’m holding off until the price comes down to $4.50.
“Spaceship factory.” I like the sound of that. “My cousin just got a job down at the spaceship factory.”
Please tell sir Richard Branson to give me a call when he figures out warp drive.
Oh and please tell Sheila Jackson Lee that I was the one who planted the flag on Mars.
5.56mm
Mesa is not a “suburb” of Phoenix; it is an entirely different fairly large city to the east of Phoenix. They are even separated by a couple of other distinct cities: Tempe and Chandler.
I worked for a “spaceship factory” for 13 years (actually a “spaceship rocket factory”). And, yes, it was pretty cool.
Now they’re building this one a couple of miles from my house. I’d like to see my boys get on there.
Formerly Williams AFB.
Willy was beloved by WWII era pilots, as the weather was almost always nice, there was no wind shear, and easy take off and landing.
Continuing in the family business! Good luck to them.
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