Virgin Galactic Commercial Spaceline Buys the Spaceship Company

Virgin Galactic announced that it has acquired 100 percent of The Spaceship Company (TSC), a sister company. The commercial spaceline company purchased the 30 percent stake held by Scaled Composites (Scaled) since TSC’s formation under a joint venture with Virgin Galactic. No purchase figure was disclosed.

According to Virgin Galactic, the acquisition marks the successful completion of a long-term strategy and signifies the end of the first phase of TSC’s development. During this development phase, TSC completed the build out of manufacturing and assembly facilities in Mojave, Calif., established a specialized workforce and transitioned necessary assets from Scaled in order to begin building Virgin Galactic’s commercial fleet of WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft and SpaceShipTwo (SS2) manned sub-orbital spacecraft. These vehicles will be used for Virgin Galactic’s planned spaceline operations which will be based at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic and Scaled are now beginning to plan the handover of the SS2 development program to Virgin Galactic, with Scaled remaining fully committed to the final portion of the WK2 and SS2 test flight programs prior to Virgin Galactic commencing commercial operations.

Virgin Galactic, owned by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and aabar Investments PJS, is on track to be the world’s first commercial spaceline. The new spaceship (SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise) and carrier craft (WhiteKnightTwo, VMS Eve) have both been developed for Virgin Galactic by Mojave-based Scaled Composites.

The Spaceship Company, a new aerospace production company founded by Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, is building the fleet of vehicles for Virgin Galactic. Founded by Burt Rutan, Scaled developed SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 claimed the $10m Ansari X Prize as the world’s first privately developed manned spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic’s new vehicles share much of the same basic design, but are being built to carry six customers, or the equivalent scientific research payload, on sub-orbital space flights, allowing an out-of-the-seat, zero-gravity experience and offering astounding views of the planet from the black sky of space for tourist astronauts and a unique microgravity platform for researchers. The VSS Enterprise and VMS Eve test flight program is well under way, leading to Virgin Galactic commercial operations, which will be based at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Scaled Composites is an aerospace and specialty composites development company located in Mojave, Calif. Founded in 1982 by Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites has broad experience in air vehicle design, tooling and manufacturing, specialty composite structure design, analysis and fabrication, and developmental flight tests of air and space vehicles. In 2007, Northrop Grumman Corporation, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Allied Holdings, Inc., acquired Scaled Composites, which today continues to operate as a separate company focused on aerospace solutions.

Headquartered at Mojave Air and Space Port, The Spaceship Company is the aerospace production company, founded by Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, which is building the world’s first fleet of commercial spaceships (SpaceShipTwos) and carrier aircraft (WhiteKnightTwos) intended to make regular, commercial, manned space travel a reality.

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