It is official now. Virgin Galactic (SPCE -6.23%) is out of the area tourism enterprise — at the least for some time.

On Saturday, June 8, Virgin Galactic’s “Galactic 07” mission efficiently took off, briefly visited area, and landed with all passengers protected and sound. This was the corporate’s seventh revenue-generating business flight. Now, Virgin intends to retire its single operational “Unity” spaceplane and pause operations whereas it builds a pair of latest “Delta” spaceplanes to switch it.

Consequently, for the following two straight years, not a single Virgin spaceplane will get wherever close to area.

Opponents within the wings

For one in all Virgin Galactic’s rivals, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, that is unqualifiedly excellent news. Blue Origin resumed flying area tourism flights of its personal final month, and Unity’s early retirement signifies that Blue Origin will get to scale its area tourism enterprise for so long as two straight years with out worrying about competitors from Virgin Galactic.

A second competitor, nevertheless, might not be so lucky.

For the previous decade or extra, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has constructed a enterprise on the mannequin of stealing market share from his rivals by constructing higher, less expensive rockets and spacecraft and undercutting his rivals on worth. Musk has executed this in satellite tv for pc launch, in lunar landers, and in satellite tv for pc web already.

Up till final week, he appeared more likely to do it in area tourism, too.

Introducing Starship: SpaceX’s area tour bus

SpaceX launched its Tremendous Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft on a fourth and largely profitable take a look at flight final week. Whereas the two-part megarocket has some kinks to work out, and SpaceX nonetheless envisions a number of take a look at flights earlier than it will probably carry cargoes — or people — to area, Starship appears more likely to finally pose a potent menace to each Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.

The reason being that Musk has designed Starship primarily as a big transport for colonists to Mars. To serve this goal, Starship was constructed massive sufficient to hold as many as 100 passengers at a time. What’s extra, as a reusable rocket ship, it is designed to price as little as $10 million per launch.

It does not take a Ph.D. to do that math. Ten million {dollars} divided by 100 equals a possible ticket worth as little as $100,000 for passengers on a SpaceX area tour bus. That is lower than half of what Virgin Galactic initially charged its clients…and fewer than 25% of what Virgin fees immediately.

And for a lot higher area excursions.

Not like Virgin Galactic’s Unity (or Delta) spaceplanes and Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship, Starship is an orbital-class car. As such, it is going to have the ability to carry vacationers on for much longer journeys — dayslong orbits of the Earth or journeys to the moon and again, for instance. In distinction, Virgin Galactic’s and Blue Origin’s suborbital spacecraft can supply at greatest a pair minutes of weightlessness on the very fringe of area earlier than touchdown again on Earth.

Schadenfreude for SpaceX

Given this danger, Virgin Galactic buyers are most likely having fun with a little bit of schadenfreude over this month’s SpaceX information.

5 years in the past, SpaceX scored an area tourism coup when Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to lease a whole SpaceX “Starship” spacecraft, aiming to grow to be the primary personal astronaut to fly the brand new vessel on a six-day “dearMoon” journey to the moon and again. On the time, Starship was nonetheless very removed from able to fly, however SpaceX advised Maezawa (and eight fellow passengers) to count on a 2023 launch date.

In a June 1 submit on X, nevertheless, Maezawa introduced he’s canceling the journey and his contract with SpaceX.

I am unable to plan my future on this scenario, and I really feel horrible making the crew members wait longer, therefore the troublesome choice to cancel at this time limit.
I apologize to those that had been excited for this venture to occur.

— Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) (@yousuckMZ) June 1, 2024

Maezawa blamed delays within the flight schedule (which in any case, was alleged to depart final yr), though a number of members of his crew have famous they might have been completely happy to attend so long as wanted for Starship to be prepared. Different commenters recommend the truth that Maezawa’s web value falling from $3 billion in 2018 to $1.4 billion immediately could have had one thing to do along with his choice to again out.

What it means for buyers

SpaceX must be dissatisfied by this. Buyers are dissatisfied, too. We’ll miss our first likelihood to find out how a lot SpaceX may be charging for area tourism journeys on Starship, and the possibility to match that ticket worth to these of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. That might have given us a greater thought not solely of how far Virgin’s and Blue Origin’s costs would possibly finally fall, but in addition a greater thought of the worth of a future SpaceX IPO.

If there’s any comfort in any respect, although, at the least buyers in Virgin Galactic know they’ve one other couple of years earlier than they should fear about SpaceX taking up the trade that Virgin Galactic created. For that, they will breathe a small sigh of aid.