Congratulations to Richard Branson!
Mr. Branson took 90 minutes out of his busy schedule yesterday to pop over to space for a quick float (enter to get your own trip here) and, while it's one small step for Sir Richard, it's one giant leap for the future of mankind as we are now a big step closer to the reality of space travel opening up to the masses. Well, the very, very rich masses – but that too will change.
Russia was charging $20M to take people to the International Space Station and Jeff Bezos is about to launch his first rocket with his first passenger paying $28M for a 15-minute flight so Branson's $500,000 90-minute flight (but the same 3-5 minutes in actual space) is kind of a bargain and that's why Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE) is up 5% this morning – even though it's already trading at hundreds of times what it's likely to make over the next few years ($12Bn).
SPCE has been losing $50M per quarter recently but that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things. Carnival Cruise lines lost $10 BILLION last year and is losing $1.5Bn/qtr this year and the only way you get to space on one of those ships is when you overdo it at the bar.
This is a big moment in human history. In 1914, the first commercial airline flight took off from St. Petersburg, Florida and flew all the way to Tampa, Florida – 21 miles away! In 1913, a trip between the two cities, sitting on opposite sides of Tampa Bay, took two hours by steamship or from 4 to 12 hours by rail. Traveling by automobile around the bay took about 20 hours. The flight would take about 20 minutes.
The airplane had a top speed of 64 mph (103 km/h). The hull was made of three layers of spruce with fabric between each layer. The wings were made of spruce spars with linen stretched over them. The plane was built to hold only a pilot and one passenger…
