Space travel at ‘tipping point for the industry’, says Virgin Galactic boss

Commercial spaceflight company Virgin Galactic has said the industry is at a “tipping point” as the brand continues to scale. 

Speaking at Aspire’s Leaders of Luxury conference on June 22, Virgin Galactic’s chief growth officer Megan Prichard said: “In the whole history of humanity, only 780 people have been to space, [but] we’re about to be able to send 700-plus people a year.”

She shared the brand has “created a repeatable spaceship that’s able to fly twice a week”, with it taking “less than six months” to build the spaceships as part of the fourth-generation Delta Programme.

The Virgin Galactic experience is currently priced at $750,000 per person, including the flight itself and all related training for clients to become ‘astronauts’.

According to Prichard, this is “many orders of magnitude less expensive” than other commercial space travel providers on the market.

Virgin Galactic has recently released 50 tickets at this price point for which there has been “very strong interest”, with the brand “expecting to close out [the 50-ticket release] in the next month or so”.

Prichard said: “We’ve had interest from people from 20 countries, and the age range is quite varied. 

“We have those in their late 20s or early 30s who have had professional success and see this as a transformational experience, and those aged 55-plus and who might actually want to do a multi-generational trip.”

She also said “several people” have booked charters. 

The brand has also seen interest from people who aren’t necessarily high-end travellers, with Prichard sharing that, of the approximately 650 people currently signed up to fly, “half are high-net-worth and half are not”.

“If you know you are able to afford it, you will go, and if you’re just so excited about it, you will find a way,” she said. 

“In fact, most of the people I talk to in our astronaut community say the reason they’ve made money in their life is to have this experience.” 

Prichard advised Leaders of Luxury attendees that more of their clients may be interested in space travel than they expect and encouraged agents to “educate people that they can go to space”.

She said the ideal candidate for space travel is someone with a “pioneering spirit” and “someone who loves to explore and who lights up about the opportunity to do something unique”.

“Because so few people have actually gone [to space], there isn’t actually a language or a culture around what it is yet,” Prichard said. “If you have a client who you know would love to be a part of developing that language and culture, that’s who you’re looking for.”

Prichard said her eventual vision is universal accessibility of space travel: “We would love to have everybody who wants to to be able to fly to space.”