Delta, Virgin Galactic's new space tourist spacecraft soon ready for take-off

Delta , the new all-purple spacecraft with which Virgin Galactic will carry another round of space tourists in suborbital flight , after having carried 23 since its debut in 2014 with the Unity model, stands out in full size before my eyes, on one of the runways of Le Bourget airport in Paris during the Paris Air Show, the global showcase of aviation and aerospace.

Then it fires up its engines and takes off , launching out of the atmosphere: the preview, although very convincing, is only an optical illusion made possible by the Apple Vision Pro augmented reality headset , but what is real is the commitment to build it in time for the first launches in 2026.

“We’re already starting to assemble it in Phoenix: Carbon Aerospace is building the wing and fuselage, while Bell Textron is building our control systems and the tail, which is able to rotate during certain phases of flight,” Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic , told me. Before joining billionaire Richard Branson ’s company, Moses worked at NASA on the Space Shuttle program, taking part in around 75 missions.

“The experience will be similar to that offered with the previous spacecraft, although more pleasant, because those travelling will be subjected to forces equal to 3G, lower than those experienced before : after taking off with the mothership and reaching an altitude of about 15,000 metres in an hour, Delta [which is anchored on its belly, ed .] will detach and ignite the rocket that will take it to reach the speed of Mach 3 in 25 seconds, or three times the speed of sound [about 1,200 km per hour, ed .] to climb until it leaves the atmosphere, where the tail will fold and turn the aircraft upside down. Here the passengers, who will remain weightless for about 4 minutes, will be able to admire the Earth from the windows on the roof, before refastening their seatbelts and returning to base”.

So what's new?

That with Unity the times for checks and maintenance between one flight and the next were very long and so we were able to do only one mission a month, while with Delta we will be able to do two missions a week , with three days of ground checks sufficient to ensure total safety.

How did you do it?

We did it thanks to the use, for the design and engineering, of the technological tools provided by Dassault Systèmes , a company that is a leader in the aeronautical and aerospace sector. Thanks to their 3DX platform, used for the first time for commercial space flights, we were able to do several things [while Moses speaks with the Apple visor I see all the main interventions on the components, the avionics, etc., ed .]: first of all to modify the design in order to shorten the inspection times , for example of the actuator of the horizontal stabilizer, which requires continuous maintenance, but now we can check in a few hours, because it is more easily accessible, also because there are three times more access panels to the instrumentation and components than there were in Unity. Not to mention that we have tested new materials on the ground that allow them to be used for many more missions. Furthermore, using 3DX has allowed us to reduce the weight of the spaceship by 1,100 kilos. This is how we will go from 4 passengers per flight to 6, plus the 2 pilots.

How many flights and spacecraft do you plan to schedule?

Each Delta will be able to fly twice a week all year round, carrying a total of about 650-700 people out of the atmosphere , a huge leap compared to the past. This will allow us to respond to existing reservations in the first year, which currently see 700 people waiting to fly. But we plan to build a second spacecraft, to start creating a small economy of scale. Also thanks to the annual revenue, which will be about 450 million dollars per spacecraft.

How much will the flight cost?

We haven't made the price official, but the ticket should cost around 600 thousand dollars [an increase from 200 thousand in the very early days, then raised to 450 thousand, ed.].

A price that is not exactly within everyone's reach. When Richard Branson announced the birth of Virgin Galactic, the promise was that one day space tourism would become mass…

If we look at what has happened in civil aviation, we can think that if today everyone can take a low-cost flight, in the beginning flying was an experience reserved for a very few very rich people. We have not revealed how much it will cost to build a new spacecraft, but Delta's costs are significantly lower than those of Unity . Furthermore, if we gradually manage to build a small fleet and more than one spaceport, we could get to flying once or twice a day. It is inevitable that thanks to the economy of scale this will allow us to lower the prices of the tickets, although I think it will take another ten years for Richard's dream to begin to materialize. We will certainly become the cheapest company offering suborbital flights. And although it will require spending a considerable amount of money, we assure you that seeing the Earth in flight in zero gravity is a life-changing experience. And then there is one last consideration to make regarding the market.

Which?

There is a great demand for scientific research in microgravity conditions, but access to the ISS is very complex and requires a lot of time, in addition to the fact that once a prototype is sent to the space station it must remain there for a long time and therefore be perfect. For this reason I think that a market of people who want to use our flights to do experiments repeated over time, at certainly lower costs, will develop in parallel.