Although it feels like it was more recent than this, Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy on April 3rd, a week short of two months ago. And in the month or weeks before that, there had been talk about the company selling off assets.
Today, news reports broke that three companies are to buy most of Virgin Orbit's assets.
In a May 23 filing (pdf alert) with federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, Virgin Orbit announced that Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and Vast made the winning bids for separate segments of the company’s assets, including manufacturing facilities and its Boeing 747 aircraft.
- Rocket Lab bid $16.1 million for the lease on Virgin Orbit’s main production facility in Long Beach, California, along with machinery and equipment there. Rocket Lab has its headquarters and a production facility just a couple blocks away in Long Beach.
- Launcher, a launch vehicle company acquired by space station developer Vast in February, bid $2.7 million for Virgin Orbit’s lease on a test site in Mojave, California, along with machinery, equipment and inventory there.
- The bankruptcy auction also accepted the $17 million “stalking horse” bid from Stratolaunch for Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 “Cosmic Girl” and related equipment. That bid, announced May 16, served as a minimum for the value of the overall auction.
Of the three major buyers, the only one that might not be familiar to most readers is the last one: Stratolaunch, and a quick search shows I've never mentioned them. Stratolaunch currently operates its custom-designed Roc aircraft that it
uses as a launch platform for hypersonic vehicles it is developing. The Roc aircraft, designed by Scaled Composites, will be more familiar to the vast majority of you. Just look at the opening picture in this article on a test flight last October. You'll know it when you see it.
Vast, of course, was the subject of an introductory post two weeks ago. They are developing a private space station called Haven-1 to be launched under contract by SpaceX, and are working on manned missions starting pretty much along with the launch of Haven-1. Their Launcher division was apparently originally a rocket development company acquired by Vast in February. Vast discontinued plans to build a launch vehicle after acquiring Launcher, but said it would continue work on the E-2 rocket engine it had been developing for that vehicle, planning to offer it to other customers.
There had been talk in the last couple of months about another company taking over all of Virgin Orbit and resuming operations. Virgin said they had nine such offers but all apparently weren't adequate. The auction results rule out any attempt to keep the company intact and bring it out of bankruptcy under new ownership.
Virgin Orbit said in a May 23 statement that it would cease operations after completing the sale of the assets. It noted that the bankruptcy sale was the result of “a rigorous and competitive auction which maximizes value for the estate and minimizes the remaining duration of the Company’s restructuring.”
There are a couple of other assets that haven't been finalized, yet, but that are considered sold and resolved.
Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne and Cosmic Girl platform prepare for a launch at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Photo credit: Virgin Orbit
Virgin Orbit is just about officially, completely gone. Virgin Galactic has been moving toward resuming their suborbital tourism business soon.
Space is hard. And expensive. Not all companies survive.
ReplyDeleteAnybody got a dance card? I'm having trouble keeping track!
ReplyDelete;P
And two of the three are California-based assets. I'd rather step into a pit of rattlesnakes with live rats stapled to my body than have any commercial business in said state.
ReplyDeleteWonder if Rocketlab and Vast will mine the good materials and move out of state.
Here's a good article from Eric Berger No one should be surprised Virgin Orbit failed
ReplyDeleteHere's another one on a slightly different tangent:
Deletehttps://arstechnica.com/space/2023/05/a-new-report-finds-nasa-has-spent-an-obscene-amount-of-money-on-sls-propulsion/
I recall writing about some of that in the last couple of years. From memory (so approximate numbers), the RS-25 engines cost in the vicinity of $25 million each when ordered as fully reusable engines for the Shuttles. The SLS version will be used once and thrown away, and I recall reading they would cost $150 million each, so $600 million for the four engines. That article talks about getting the price down to $70 million (by ignoring some significant components in the cost). Meanwhile, the BE-4, while not yet flown, costs $20 million and SpaceX's Raptors (that just set the all time chamber pressure record) is under $1 million, and the target of $500,000 has been mentioned for years.
DeleteI didn't realize they were a separate company... And I agree with the linked article above; they spent lots of money developing a limited system that essentially copies an existing limited system with little demand.
ReplyDeleteIt's specialized and can't use volume to make more money, but it's not specialized enough...