New Virgin Galactic Chairman Chamath Palihapitiya says tourism spaceflights to begin within a year.
Virgin Galactic is set to become the first publicly-traded human spaceflight company when it lists. The company has completed two flights to the edge of space, with the first in December and the second, which carried Virgin Galactic's first passenger, in February.
"What the team has built, and this is what was amazing to me, is a business that has software-like margins. This thing looks like a software business under the hood even though it's flying people to space. This is, I think, a really compelling risk-reward," Palihapitiya said. Hypersonic air travel is also on the table for Virgin Galactic, according to Palihapitiya, although Virgin Galactic is likely a decade away from transporting people from one distant place on the Earth to the other. Currently, Virgin Galactic's space tourism flights return to the same spaceport from which they take off.Branson compared the growth of the space tourism market to the early days of aviation, when transatlantic flights cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Space tourism could be the stepping stone for the development of long-haul travel on earth serviced by space," UBS said.
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