Virgin Galactic Restarts Space-trip Sales at $450,000 and Up
Voice of America
The ticket window is open again for space flights at Virgin Galactic, with prices starting at $450,000 a seat.
The space-tourism company said Thursday it is making progress toward beginning revenue flights next year. It will sell single seats, package deals and entire flights. Virgin Galactic announced the offerings as it reported Thursday that it lost $94 million in the second quarter on soaring costs for overhead and sales. The company posted revenue of $571,000, barely enough to cover one seat on a future flight. The company's most noteworthy recent achievement came last month, after the quarter ended, when founder Richard Branson and five crewmates soared to 86 kilometers (53.5 miles) above the New Mexico desert.Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 President, center, arrives to a news conference next to Yalchin Rafiyev, left, Azerbaijan's COP29 lead negotiator, during the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 18, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, speaks ahead of a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 18, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. People adjust a banner outside the venue for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 18, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. FILE - Activist Teresa Anderson leads a demonstration calling for climate finance during the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 14, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
'Seed guardians' (not pictured) display corns and potatoes as well as seeds of tomatoes, little yellow pears and artichoke, as they meet to exchange forgotten vegetables varieties, in Rancagua, Chile, Oct. 11, 2024. Mapuche native cook and farmer Ana Yanez Antillanca, known as a 'Seed guardian', shows 'egg pumpkin' seeds as she meets with comrades to exchange forgotten vegetables varieties, in Rancagua, Chile, Oct. 11, 2024.
A Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials researcher controls a wheelchair with stiffness-variable "morphing" wheels in Daejeon, South Korea, Nov. 5, 2024. The "morphing" wheel can roll over obstacles up to 1.3 times the height of its radius. Inspired by the surface tension of water droplets, it goes from solid to fluid when it encounters impediments.
FILE - Part of the temples of Baalbek, a UNESCO world heritage site in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley, illuminated in blue light, Oct. 24, 2015. FILE - This picture shows closed shops on an empty street in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek on Oct. 19, 2024. FILE - People walk near the Roman ruins of Baalbek, Lebanon, Jan. 5, 2024. FILE - A man sits amidst the rubble at a site damaged in the aftermath of an Israeli strike on the town of Al-Ain in the Baalbek region, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Lebanon, Nov. 6, 2024.
Dr. Jaafar al Jotheri, shown here Nov. 10, 2024, holds satellite images and explores the site of the Battle of al-Qadisiyah, which was fought in Mesopotamia -- present-day Iraq -- in the 630s AD. A desert area with scattered plots of agricultural land with features that closely matched the description of the al-Qadisiyah battle site described in historic texts, Nov. 10, 2024.