What to Expect from Virgin Galactic's Upgraded Spaceplane

After a few short trips to the edge of space, Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane is set for retirement, making room for a worthy successor. The company’s Delta class vehicle is gearing up for its debut in 2025, promising to bring in some profit with weekly suborbital flights.

WatchWho’s This Thing Actually for? | PlayStation Portal Hands On CCShare SubtitlesOffEnglishFrequent flyerCompared to its predecessor, the Delta class vehicle will be larger and able to carry six passengers on board rather than Unity’s four-person capacity. The fourth seat has been used to carry a Virgin Galactic employee on board the suborbital flights.AdvertisementThe company also claims that the Delta vehicles will require less maintenance between flights, and will therefore be capable of launching up to twice a week. Unity, on the other hand, can only fly once a month.The new Delta vehicle will have the same outer mold line as Unity, but its composite structure and avionics will be designed to make it lighter and faster to turn around between flights.AdvertisementDelta also requires a new mothership. Virgin Galactic’s current mothership, the VMS Eve carrier, takes off while carrying the Unity spaceplane beneath its wings before releasing it at an altitude of 44,500 feet (13,500 meters) above the ground. Once released, the spaceplane fires up its rocket engines, lifting off to a maximum altitude of 54.2 miles (87 kilometers), which is a few miles shy of the internationally recognized boundary of space known as the Kármán Line.For Delta, Virgin Galactic partnered with Aurora Flight Sciences, a Virginia-based Boeing subsidiary, to design and build its next-generation motherships. The new motherships are an upgraded version of Eve, designed to be faster to produce and easier to maintain to help the company scale up its operations.AdvertisementSoaring revenueUltimately, Delta is designed to bring in more cash for Virgin Galactic’s space tourism business. AdvertisementDuring an Virgin Galactic is hoping to see profits with its Delta vehicle, with each spaceplane costing between $50 to $60 million to produce and an estimated lifetime of 500 flights. With six passengers on board, each paying $450,000 per ticket, that adds up to $2.7 million in revenue for each flight while the operating costs per flight add up to around $400,000. That means the potential profit for each suborbital trip is $2.3 million.AdvertisementNo wonder the space company is eager to see its Delta class vehicles fly. The next generation spaceplanes will be put together at a new factory in Mesa, Arizona, which is expected to be operational by the end of this year. From there, Virgin Galactic wants to begin flight tests of the first Delta spaceplane in 2025, and to start launching commercial crews on the new vehicle in 2026. That timeline may be a little ambitious as the company has not started production of its Delta vehicle yet. Its predecessor, Unity, also suffered some delays before it finally took off on its final test flight before ushering in the commercial flights. In May, the spaceplane reached the edge of space for the first time since July 2021 when six passengers, including Branson himself, AdvertisementVirgin Galactic is all in on Delta, and a lot is riding on the new spaceplane. “The Delta ships are powerful economic engines,” Michael Colglazier, Virgin’s chief executive officer, wrote in a memo to employees, according to SpaceNews. “To bring them into service, we need to extend our strong financial position and reduce our reliance on unpredictable capital markets. We will accomplish this, but it requires us to redirect our resources toward the Delta ships while streamlining and reducing our work outside of the Delta program.”For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated

Based on reporting by gizmodo.com.