Virgin Galactic Sells 100 More Tickets For Commercial Space Trips

(RTTNews) - Billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic (SPCE) announced that they have sold another 100 tickets for their suborbital space flights since the bookings resumed in August. This takes the tally to 700 bookings, 300 short of the initial target before starting the commercial flights. The company announced during the third-quarter earnings report that the company has sold more tickets than it had hoped to sell in the last quarter. "We're selling tickets ahead of the pace we planned," Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic's CEO said. "The pricing strategy we announced last quarter has been well received." The price of each trip is $450,000. Interested individuals will have to deposit $150,000 of which $25,000 will be non-refundable. The company is also hoping to open up the tickets for the people who have already inquired about the flights. The company posted a narrower loss in the third quarter at $48 million, down from $92 million last year. The company raised around $500 million back in July by selling 13.7 million shares to continue with its operations. Virgin Galactic kickstarted their space-tourism with VSS Unity 22 back in July that featured the first CEO to go space, Richard Branson. The flight marred the success of Jeff Bezos's flight to space which took place nine days later but was announced and hyped for a long time. However, earlier in September, New Yorker reported that Virgin Galactic was being probed by the Federal Aviation Administration for an alleged deviation from its approved path back to earth. The company was grounded for some time before being let loose later in the same month. In September, Virgin Galactic had planned to launch its first revenue-generating space mission with 3 Italian Air force members on board in Unity 23 but due to a manufacturing defect in the flight control actuation system, the flight got delayed. Virgin has announced a long line-up of space shuttles. VSS Imagine was planned for March 2022 while VSS Inspire stood in the queue. Then, in October, the company announced that the space tourism program will not resume in 2022. Virgin Galactic is using the time to go through a comprehensive overhaul of the crafts to avoid any further delay. However, those who have already booked their seats might have to stand and wait for some time till their shuttle takes off.