Almost two weeks after Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) announced a shift of operations to focus on its next generation of spaceships, the California space travel company said it expects to expand its footprint at New Mexico's Spaceport America ahead of a big increase in commercial spaceflight service.
Although Virgin Galactic didn't provide specific details about what exactly that expansion could look like, a spokesperson for the company told New Mexico Inno that Virgin's expansion at Spaceport America would support a higher cadence of flights and a larger fleet of vehicles.
That's because the space travel company expects its next generation of spaceships, called the "Delta" class, to fly up to eight times per month during steady-state operations. Preparing those Delta-class ships for revenue service in New Mexico starting in 2026, with flight tests expected in mid-2025, was the focus of Virgin Galactic's recent strategic realignment.
The company laid off 73 employees in New Mexico, spread across sites in Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice issued by Virgin Galactic on Nov. 8, as part of that operational shift. It's to "focus the entire company on realizing the profit potential" from the Delta-class ships, CEO Michael Colglazier said during the company's Q3 earnings call Nov. 8.
While Virgin Galactic still has an employee base of over 200 people in New Mexico, the company plans to pause flights out of Spaceport America in the middle of next year as part of its strategic realignment. Progress on a planned Virgin Galactic astronaut training campus near Elephant Butte is also currently on hold.
The company's planned increase in operations at Spaceport America starting in 2025 is "well within the capacity of the Spaceport to support," said Scott McLaughlin, the executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority — the state body that oversees Spaceport America. Still, McLaughlin told New Mexico Inno there are a few considerations on the minds of Spaceport leadership for when and if Virgin's Delta-class service takes off.
That includes managing Spaceport America's airspace, which McLaughlin called the Spaceport's "most valued resource." Its airspace is owned and managed by White Sands Missile Range, so companies with operations at the Spaceport have to schedule their use of the airspace well in advance.
"It's something that the master plan is looking at, how do we handle … daily launches or near-daily launches with Virgin [Galactic] and still support other customers," McLaughlin said. "I don't think we have a lot of good answers on that yet."
"It would be a good problem to have, but we're not quite there yet," he added.
The Spaceport Authority recently kicked off a years-long master planning process for Spaceport America to identify future market opportunities for the 18,000-acre facility near Truth or Consequences. The Authority plans to hold a public meeting on the process in Albuquerque on Jan. 10, although a location hasn't been picked yet.
Expanding "ground activities" at the Spaceport is another consideration going forward, said Francisco Pallares, the Spaceport Authority's business development director. That would help diversify the Authority's revenue away from a dependence on the use of White Sands' airspace, he added.
Another longer-term consideration for the Spaceport Authority surrounding Virgin Galactic's operations is the Authority's lease with the California space travel company. Virgin's current lease for its $200 million-plus "Gateway to Space" hangar and operations facility at the Spaceport expires in 2033.
A previous version of the lease agreement between the Spaceport Authority and Virgin Galactic included a per-flight revenue element. But the agreement was amended in 2018 to a more flat rate, McLaughlin said.
Because a per-flight component isn't a part of the lease currently, McLaughlin said the Spaceport Authority doesn't expect a significant change in operational revenue generated by Virgin Galactic even when it pauses flights out of the Spaceport next year. But re-incorporating a per-flight component to the agreement could be a part of future lease renewal discussions, he added.
"Given that we're going to have to redo portions of the lease, or maybe the entire lease to encompass the hangar they want to build and some other things, we might discuss how to get into a per-flight model that maybe rewards the Spaceport a little bit more," McLaughlin said. "But we're not there yet in terms of that conversation."
A spokesperson for Virgin Galactic didn't confirm that a new hangar facility is part of the company's expansion plans when asked by New Mexico Inno, noting that Virgin plans to release more details about its New Mexico expansion work in the coming year.
Virgin Galactic's next flight out of Spaceport America is planned for January 2024. It'll be the first time Virgin flies with each of the seats on its spaceship, VSS Unity, taken up by paying customers. Previous flights included a Virgin astronaut instructor on board VSS Unity alongside private passengers.
