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Virgin Galactic's Quiet News: Virgin Now Owns The SpaceShip Company

RocketAcademy writes "While all eyes were focused on SpaceX, which is preparing for another launch to the International Space Station, Virgin Galactic quietly put out a press release. Virgin Galactic has acquired full ownership of The SpaceShip Company, which will build production versions of SpaceShip Two. Ownership was previously shared with Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShip One and is building the SpaceShip Two prototype. There have been rumors of strained relations between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites. This news, which was not announced until after the close of business Friday, raises some interesting questions about Virgin's relationship with Scaled and its plans for the future."

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  1. Re:Interesting questions by roman_mir · · Score: -1, Troll

    "wealthy on paper" - you can call your fiat system that. You think you are wealthy if you have cash? Dollars? Let me tell you something, I rather have no dollars or any other fiat currencies at all and have stake in dividend paying companies and various assets, it's a much better plan than holding fiat currencies, whose value can only go down, because the control over them is in the hands of politicians.

    However you are forgetting something: death tax. If you have a company and you die, the IRS (and State gov't) wants your heirs to give them cash, for that they want you to liquidate the company, which often means at firesale prices. That's why Warren Buffet loves that tax, his company, BH, comes in and buys the equity at a depressed value because of and then later makes money by reselling it.

    lots of employees jobs at risk and whatnot. there are probably all sorts of legalities associated with selling out

    - well, if it's a post-IPO company, then there SEC rules when you can sell your shares, if it is a private company it's nobody's business, if you can sell it and you want to, you sell it. People don't sell because they want to keep running their business.

    what a load of shit that is. maybe compared to someone that doesn't work at all (as in zero work)

    - no, they are millions of times more productive than any one particular employee if they build a company that sells to millions of people.

    If you can build a product and sell to millions of people, that's being productive on the scale of millions. If you can satisfy millions of customers, then that's your productivity. An employee is interchangeable, he has a specific function, a business owner who built the business made the company that satisfied millions of customers.

    It's the same thing as building millions of products and providing them to millions of people all on your own, your employees matter, but they are part of the machine that you built.