The story was surely too good. With Virign Orbit, billionaire Richard Branson hoped to be able to develop a solution for launching satellites into orbit using an unconventional rocket model, rocket planes. The principle on paper is very simple.
A plane (derived from a Boeing 747) takes off with a small rocket under its fuselage. Once the plane is at a high altitude, the rocket detaches and takes over. This system was used in particular by the Virgin Galactic company for Richard Branson’s first space flight in July 2021.
Almost two years later, things have changed too little. Manned flights have still not resumed and of the six attempts to put satellites into orbit, only four have succeeded. With such a low launch ratio, the company has had financial problems.
A few weeks ago Virgin Orbit announced the dismissal of a large part of the teams as well as the temporary cessation of flights. This Thursday, the brand announced the final end of the project. Founded in 2017, the company will have hired more than 600 people in nearly 6 years of history.
Start Me Up: the switch?
Looking back it’s quite easy to find the tipping points in Virgin Orbit’s history. The most obvious is probably the “Start Me Up” mission that took place at the beginning of the year. It was to mark the first launch of satellites into orbit from Britain.
This event, closely followed by various political authorities saw a success of 80% of the mission but during the start-up of the rocket an “anomaly” prevented the latter from going into orbit. After analysis, Virgin Orbit engineers saw that a $100 fuel filter was responsible for the failure.
Branson said stop, the house of cards is collapsing
Despite the numerous failures of Virgin Orbit, the company has managed to survive, in particular thanks to the (almost) unlimited financial resources of Richard Branson, the group’s big boss. According to several financial experts, he would have invested nearly 55 million dollars in this project which he had known was doomed to failure for years.
Since March 16 and the “pause” of the company’s activities, it seems that Richard Branson has negotiated with the employees to make their departure as simple as possible. Several Virgin Orbit executives are expected to commute to the group’s other company, Virgin Galactic, whose unstable finances are likely to awaken bad memories. For the others, “golden parachutas” have been set up and approved by the board of directors.
