Virgin Galactic; the confusion between Virgin Orbit closing and Virgin Galactic continuing answered

We are mere hours away from the inaugural launch of Virgin Galactic’s ‘Galactic 01’ flight from Spaceport America, New Mexico with the crew aboard the flight undergoing their last safety checks before entering sub-orbit. 

It marks what is considered the first “official” commercial space flight for Sir Richard Branson’s company, bringing to fruition an ambition long held since he was a child watching the Apollo space missions.

But there seems to be some confusion regarding Virgin’s space exploration, as some (including my father-in-law this morning) seem to think that Branson had shut down Virgin Galactic after filing for bankruptcy. The confusion stems from the fact that Branson, in fact, had two projects that both stemmed around shuttle launches and going into space.

However, one is very much different to the other, admittedly with very similar names. As it stands, the confusion lay in what the differences are between the Virgin Galactic project and the previously titled “Virgin Orbit” project that Branson had set up in 2017 and suspended operations for earlier this year (January 2023.)

So what are, or were, the differences between Virgin Orbit and Virgin Galactic, as we eagerly await the flights of both VMS Eve and VSS Unity this afternoon?

What was Virgin Orbit?

Virgin Orbit formed in 2017 as a spin-off from Virgin Galactic to develop and market the LauncherOne rocket; an air-launched two-stage launch vehicle designed to deliver small payloads to low Earth orbit. The company had a series of launches starting in 2020, with a mix of successful and unsuccessful missions. 

However, after encountering financial challenges and facing difficulty securing additional financing, Virgin Orbit had to lay off a significant portion of its staff and suspend operations in March 2023. It eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2023.

The remaining assets of the company were sold off in May 2023 to various aerospace companies, fetching a considerably lower value than the company's initial valuation.

Virgin Galactic is focused on space tourism, aiming to provide suborbital space flights to paying customers. Its spacecraft, VSS Unity, was designed to carry a crew of pilots and passengers to experience weightlessness and see the Earth's curvature. Virgin Galactic's goal was to make space tourism accessible to the general public and contribute to the advancement of commercial space travel.

While both ventures operated under the Virgin Group and shared an interest in space exploration, their specific objectives and approaches were different; Virgin Orbit's focus was on launching satellites, whereas Virgin Galactic concentrated on space tourism.