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Its literally the exact opposite of saving money. It cost a HUGE amount of money. The reason is that in the plane you have people, so the rocket design has to

Its literally the exact opposite of saving money. It cost a HUGE amount of money. The reason is that in the plane you have people, so the rocket design has to take that into account and validating the rocket costs more. Just for reference, SpaceX and RocketLab sent their rocket to space for under 100M, while Virgin spend like 500M. That's partly because of worse leadership, but its partly inherent. A plane also isn't cheap, a ground launch station for a small rocket isn't that expensive. Additionally engineering the rocket to get carried vertically adds structure, that cost money and lowers payload. You end up not gaining that much from air-launch. It also makes the structure and avionics quite complex. Once you drop the rocket, the engine has to start or the payload is gone. Other rockets can start the engine, verify its good and then launch. Relativity space just did that. It also puts huge constraints on your rockets, the size in both weight and volume is inherently limited, and you can't evolve the architecture. In comparison SpaceX Falcon 1 could have easily been slightly upgraded and turned into a rocket that could lift 1T+ and even more eventually. And then they managed to use that engine to build a Falcon 9. Virgin Orbit has this one rocket, and its impossible to make back 100s of millions of investment with a tiny rocket and low launch cadence. They can't make the rocket significantly bigger because of the limits of the plane. I thought it was impossible for them to ever be a real company and that seem to have ended up happening. Launch is a really tough business. > And why does a single failure doom a company after 4 successful launches. Because they have already burned down a gigantic amount of cash and were in a bad stage, launch success or not. A launch earns them 12M or so. That basically nothing considering their investments and their burn.

starik36 4y ago
> Virgin spend like 500M Is that really true? If it is, I am struggling to understand what the money is being spent on. I mean the cost of Space Shuttle launches was in that neighborhood.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  We don't have official numbers but pretty good industry reporting that puts the numbers there. Read Eric Bergers reporting on them over the last 5 years or so. Its mostly just lots of people and time. Plus buying 1-2 planes. Space Shuttle development was of course way more. A single margin launch cost 500M. But with fixed cost it was 1 billion+.
detrites 4y ago
These points are all so well-reasoned and difficult to argue against, I can't fathom how they managed to get all the way to this point without these things coming up and causing a rethink of the base approach. Quite incredible.
- thefounder 4y ago
  Probably just a rug pull by the original "investors"/founders
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > These points are all so well-reasoned and difficult to argue against, I can't fathom how they managed to get all the way to this point without these things coming up and causing a rethink of the base approach. Quite incredible. Isn't "launch from a plane" basically reusable first stage, 1.0? It was also more conservative, since the idea had already been successfully implemented in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Pegasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Pegasus. Some quick googling shows Virgin Orbit started in 2011, and SpaceX landed their first rocket in 2015. Virgin Orbit's idea may have make a lot more sense before SpaceX proved out an alternative, and that didn't happen until maybe they'd done a lot of development that could have possibly paid off.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Successfully implemented in technical terms. Not really in financial terms. The rocket cost a huge amount and even with the already absurd launch prices the US military paid it wasn't the most successful. It never competed for the competitive international launch market. SpaceX landed a rocket in 2015, but Virgin Orbit wasn't even competitive with Falcon 1. Landing rockets has little to do with why it wasn't working out. Yes without Falcon 9 the market would be quite a bit bigger, but even then its hard to see how VO ever gets very far. Its offering even compared to the other small launch competition isn't really competitive. Their offering was 12M for a tiny payload, their competition was often less then 10M for payloads with more flexibility in size and volume. They simply have no migration path, no way to make their vehicle bigger, and pretty much every small launch company has realized that small launch isn't really a business you want to be in. They managed to get a lot of financing pretty early on and managed to be one of the first to orbit, but their financial outlook was always pretty bad.

starik36 4y ago

> Virgin spend like 500M Is that really true? If it is, I am struggling to understand what the money is being spent on. I mean the cost of Space Shuttle launches was in that neighborhood.

panick21_ 4y ago
We don't have official numbers but pretty good industry reporting that puts the numbers there. Read Eric Bergers reporting on them over the last 5 years or so. Its mostly just lots of people and time. Plus buying 1-2 planes. Space Shuttle development was of course way more. A single margin launch cost 500M. But with fixed cost it was 1 billion+.

detrites 4y ago

These points are all so well-reasoned and difficult to argue against, I can't fathom how they managed to get all the way to this point without these things coming up and causing a rethink of the base approach. Quite incredible.

thefounder 4y ago
Probably just a rug pull by the original "investors"/founders
tablespoon 4y ago
> These points are all so well-reasoned and difficult to argue against, I can't fathom how they managed to get all the way to this point without these things coming up and causing a rethink of the base approach. Quite incredible. Isn't "launch from a plane" basically reusable first stage, 1.0? It was also more conservative, since the idea had already been successfully implemented in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Pegasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Pegasus. Some quick googling shows Virgin Orbit started in 2011, and SpaceX landed their first rocket in 2015. Virgin Orbit's idea may have make a lot more sense before SpaceX proved out an alternative, and that didn't happen until maybe they'd done a lot of development that could have possibly paid off.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Successfully implemented in technical terms. Not really in financial terms. The rocket cost a huge amount and even with the already absurd launch prices the US military paid it wasn't the most successful. It never competed for the competitive international launch market. SpaceX landed a rocket in 2015, but Virgin Orbit wasn't even competitive with Falcon 1. Landing rockets has little to do with why it wasn't working out. Yes without Falcon 9 the market would be quite a bit bigger, but even then its hard to see how VO ever gets very far. Its offering even compared to the other small launch competition isn't really competitive. Their offering was 12M for a tiny payload, their competition was often less then 10M for payloads with more flexibility in size and volume. They simply have no migration path, no way to make their vehicle bigger, and pretty much every small launch company has realized that small launch isn't really a business you want to be in. They managed to get a lot of financing pretty early on and managed to be one of the first to orbit, but their financial outlook was always pretty bad.