Last summer Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos competed in launching themselves into space, with both billionaires experiencing zero-gravity for a brief time, as they marketed their respective "space tourism" projects.
To infinity... and back to Earth
For Richard Branson, reaching 283,000 feet above sea level on July 11th really was the peak — as everything has been downhill for his Virgin Galactic venture since then.
First a report from the New Yorker revealed that a warning light had gone off during the flight. The FAA eventually investigated and cleared the incident, but it was the start of a chain of bad news for Virgin Galactic. The company then announced delays to its commercial flights for "technical reasons", and yesterday the company announced that it was raising another $425m in debt to accelerate the "development of its spacecraft" among other uses, which sent shares down another 20%.
Taking on more debt isn't strictly a bad thing, but in this context it suggests Virgin Galactic might need a bit more funding than it previously thought. When combined with the substantial delays — commercial flights are now expected to start in October this year, way behind the original schedule to have flights start in 2020 — it isn't a great signal to investors.
