Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is reopening ticket sales for its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane, the space tourism firm announced Thursday in its second-quarter earnings release. The price: $450,000, an expected increase from the roughly $200,000 price point the company had years ago, before it closed sales.
The ticket reopening comes on the heels of Branson’s successful flight to the edge of space aboard SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic’s flagship space tourism vehicle that can carry four passengers some 53 miles high for a few minutes of weightlessness. That mission, called Unity 22, was a key milestone test of the rocket-plane before Virgin starts flying individual customers sometime next year.
“Leveraging the surge in consumer interest following the Unity 22 flight, we are excited to announce the reopening of sales effective today, beginning with our Spacefarer community,” Virgin Galactic’s chief executive Michael Colglazier said in a release. “As we endeavor to bring the wonder of space to a broad global population, we are delighted to open the door to an entirely new industry and consumer experience.”
The company is targeting September for its first revenue-generating mission, it said in the press release. That mission, Unity 23, will carry research payloads and three members from the Italian Air Force. Virgin has said it already has a backlog of some 600 ticket holders. Ticket sales for individual customers had been closed since a fatal 2014 accident during a test flight.
