Virgin Galactic speaks on progress amid two year pause on spaceflights

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. (KRQE) – It’s been more than a year since Virgin Galactic paused commercial spaceflights from New Mexico’s Spaceport to make improvements to their fleet, and with one year left before they expect to lift off again.

Now, one year into a two-year pause to make upgrades and improvements to their spaceships, Virgin Galactic said they’re making progress. “There’s no roadmap for how to build a rocket motor glider that folds in half and goes to space,” said SR Chief Engineer, Gabriel Williams.

Working with manufacturer Qarbon Aerospace, Virgin Galactic made this video showing how their new Delta class models are being built.

“What we’re doing with carbon aerospace, we’re making these huge structural parts that make up two out of our three major step assemblies, the wing and the fuselage of our spaceship,” said Williams.

The materials are entirely made out of carbon fiber and resin. “The basic steps for manufacturing composite parts are building the tool to lay it up on, laying the part up, then you bag it to prepare for the autoclave, put it in the autoclave and when it comes out you trim it to the right shape and finally you inspect it including visual inspections and NDT,” said Williams.

While they say the new spaceships come with a slew of changes, New Mexico Space Authority Executive Director Scott McLaughlin said one design feature will get the spacecraft back into space quicker. Their previous design flew once a month, but McLaughlin said the new spaceships will have a turnaround of about three days, which will allow weekly flights at the Spaceport once flights resume. “We all want to see this thing go up to space and come back down, that’s the end goal we want to be able to tell our families and our kids, hey, I had a part in that,” said Brandon Quesnelle with Qarbon Aerospace.

McLaughlin said the quicker turnaround will increase jobs and space tourism in the state.

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