Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.

Who owns Virgin Galactic?
Virgin Galactic Holdings is a public company listed on the NYSE under ticker SPCE, owned by public and institutional shareholders. Founder Richard Branson's Virgin Group retains a minority stake.

Is Virgin Galactic still flying?
Not currently. It retired the VSS Unity spaceplane in June 2024 and is building the Delta class fleet. Commercial service is expected to resume in early Q2 2027.

What is the Delta class?
The Delta class is Virgin Galactic's next-generation six-passenger spaceplane designed for frequent, lower-cost commercial flights. The lead vehicle, VSS Apeiron, was unveiled October 28, 2026, and moved to Spaceport America for flight testing.

How much does a Virgin Galactic ticket cost?
The most recent tranche sold at $750,000 per seat, and roughly 675 future astronauts hold confirmed reservations. The company expects the next tranche to price higher.

Does Virgin Galactic make money?
Not meaningfully during the development phase. Revenue was under $2 million in fiscal 2025, mainly access fees, while quarterly free cash flow burn ran around $90 million.

Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 after seeing the winning flight of SpaceShipOne in the Ansari X Prize competition, licensing the Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites technology through Mojave Aerospace Ventures. The company spent more than a decade developing SpaceShipTwo at Mojave Air and Space Port, suffering a fatal test-flight breakup of VSS Enterprise in 2014 that killed co-pilot Michael Alsbury.

Flight milestones accumulated from 2018: the first spaceflight above 50 miles in December 2018, Branson's own fully crewed flight in July 2021, and the start of commercial service in June 2023. Private astronaut missions under the Galactic flight series ran monthly through early 2024, carrying researchers and ticket holders who paid between $250,000 and $450,000 per seat.

The company went public in October 2019 through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia, the Chamath Palihapitiya-backed SPAC, becoming the first publicly traded space tourism company. Successive equity raises funded operations through years of negative cash flow.

Facing Unity's high maintenance cost per flight, management announced in late 2023 and executed in June 2024 a pause of commercial service to build the Delta class, designed for weekly flight cadence and lower cost per mission. The Spaceship Factory in Mesa, Arizona produced the lead vehicle, and on October 28, 2026, the company unveiled VSS Apeiron, named by public vote, and ferried it to Spaceport America to begin flight test preparations. First commercial spaceflight is targeted for early Q2 2027, with the second Delta ship entering service in late Q2 or early Q3 2027.

The 2014 VSS Enterprise crash, caused by premature feather deployment and investigated by the NTSB, remains the defining safety event in company history and reshaped its engineering oversight. A September 2021 flight deviation from cleared airspace triggered an FAA investigation and temporary grounding.

Investor scrutiny focuses on dilution: share count more than doubled through equity raises during 2025 and 2026, and the company acknowledged material reliance on Delta execution and future capital markets in SEC filings. Customer deposits of roughly $80 million carry refund obligations that depend on service resumption.