Comments on: Virgin confirms plans to raise ticket prices http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/05/03/virgin-confirms-plans-to-raise-ticket-prices/ Tracking the entrepreneurial space industry Fri, 12 Sep 2014 14:33:32 +0800 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: Virgin Galactic “gearing up” for second powered SpaceShipTwo flight « NewSpace Journal http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/05/03/virgin-confirms-plans-to-raise-ticket-prices/comment-page-1/#comment-870397 Sat, 17 Aug 2013 03:55:45 +0000 http://www.newspacejournal.com/?p=1997#comment-870397 […] customer, but Whitesides did note that Virgin Galactic had raised its ticket price to $250,000, as the company confirmed back in May. Those customers come from 54 countries, and range from “teenagers to 88 years old,” he […]

]]> By: D. Messier http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/05/03/virgin-confirms-plans-to-raise-ticket-prices/comment-page-1/#comment-821687 Sat, 04 May 2013 00:09:07 +0000 http://www.newspacejournal.com/?p=1997#comment-821687 To really bring the costs down, they need to go toward airline type operations on both the WK2 and SS2. That’s not possible with the current design of SS2 because they have to replace the engine after every flight.

The real solution is to go with the liquid engine they’ve been developing in Mojave for quite some time. The engine will power SS2 and LauncherOne. What such an engine does to the design of SS2 is an interesting question that can’t be answered at this time.

The engine work hasn’t progressed all that far. The engine they’re testing now is low thrust and fires for very brief periods. Reports indicate they’re going through a pretty steep learning curve that is typical for a company that has gotten into a field it has no previous expertise in. Virgin has run airlines; it’s never built engines, let alone anything for rockets.

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