“They are officially astronauts,” Virgin Galactic’s Sirisha Bandla, who provided commentary during the flight, said on the livestream. “Welcome to space.”
The passengers included 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, a British former Olympian who has Parkinson’s Disease, as well as Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, a mother-daughter pair from the Caribbean who won their seats through a charity drawing.Virgin Galactic’s shares rose 1.8% to $3.44 as of 11:27 a.m. in New York, paring an earlier gain of as much as 3.8%.
Founded in 2004, Virgin Galactic originally promised to begin flying passengers as early as 2007. In those early days, tickets were sold for $200,000 and then upped to $250,000 while the company experienced delays.during a test flight, killing one test pilot and seriously injuring another, prompting the company to suspend ticket sales.
The primary vehicle the company is flying at the moment is VSS Unity, a spaceplane that was unveiled back in 2016. “There’s a little bit of a loss leader here with Unity,” Mike Moses, president of spaceline missions and safety, said in a June interview.
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