Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said during an investor call on Monday that the Las Cruces company plans to create more than 1,000 new jobs as the commercial spaceflight firm develops its "Delta" line of spaceships designed to fly once per week.
Virgin Galactic already leased a facility for the engineering and design of the new spaceships and its next generation of carrier aircraft at an unspecified location in California, Colglazier said during Monday's call. Meanwhile, additional operations will be brought to a location that has yet to be selected, according to details on the call.
"In addition to the conception-design work, we've been exploring options to house our Delta class spaceship facilities as we will need more space than is available at our [Mojave, California] factory," Colglazier said during the call. "We've been in contact with multiple municipalities about locations and have received interest from at least three states. We expect interest to grow as we estimate we'll be creating more than 1,000 new jobs."
The announcement follows the company's decision to put off the start of commercial operations until the fourth quarter of 2022, while unveiling a vehicle improvement and modification program. The move also comes as the company prepares for its ambitious flight schedule in the coming years, which includes 400 flights annually per launch site, according to the call.
Virgin Galactic also updated the public on its ongoing ticket sales, which shot up to a starting price of $450,000 per seat following founder Richard Branson's spaceflight in July. That company had a goal of 1,000 flight reservations prior to the launch of commercial service, and about 700 have been sold, according to a company release from Monday.
On the media's coverage of the Federal Aviation Administration's recent probe of Branson's flight, which drifted outside of its assigned airspace, Colglazier had this to say: "On a glide back to the runway, our spaceship briefly left our previously permitted airspace. This is a scenario that requires notification to the FAA. While the FAA is always in our control room during flights, our flight test procedures did not have a specific protocol for mission control to communicate the situation to air traffic control in real-time. And this required rectification."
Virgin Galactic reported $1 billion worth of cash and equivalents on hand as of Sept. 30.
