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."

Comments

Interesting questions

[girlintraining]

I'm going to skip the rhetoric and just ask my question as food for thought for anyone who reads this: Why are we building space ships for rich tourists, while real science languishes in the land of budget cuts and resource shortages? Why is it okay for the very wealthy to build yachts in space while poor people starve and wonder if they'll be able to afford the medication they need to stay alive? I know these aren't easy questions -- any answer I can provide seems woefully inadequate. But I think we should be asking those questions too, not just about the businesses, but their relationship to the larger society.

Re:Interesting questions

[91degrees]

Because our society is largely based on capitalist principles which uses the profit motive as an incentive to create economic growth and technological development. Being able to afford space yachts is one of the incentives that encourages this growth.

Re:Interesting questions

[girlintraining]

Because our society is largely based on capitalist principles which uses the profit motive as an incentive to create economic growth and technological development. Being able to afford space yachts is one of the incentives that encourages this growth.

That's a lie that's told over and over again to justify massive wealth inequity. But after the first couple of million, you've got enough to live a very comfortable life, and there's no relationship between comfort and a desire to create. In fact, quite the opposite is true: It's adversity that is the mother of invention. We aren't creating multibillionaires because these people are millions of times more productive or valuable than others.

Re:Interesting questions

[petsounds]

The more work private companies to do on this problem -- that is, the putting people in space and on planets problem -- the better we get at it, the cheaper it becomes, the more sustainable the industry becomes, all of which enable more science to be done. There's also the whole deal of creating jobs for Americans (and other countries), which is a nice bonus. It's the same model as Tesla -- build an expensive sports car for the wealthy, use those profits to use a somewhat less expensive sedan, and on down the line.

Maybe it doesn't fit into your Platonic ideal of how this should go, but if you have a better idea then float it. Unless you were suggesting that spaceflight is a waste of time compared with the problems we need to solve on this planet, which I don't think has to be a binary answer.

Re:Interesting questions

[girlintraining]

And here I thought adversity made you get a second job at McDonald's to pay your rent because your immediate needs are so precarious that you can't afford to think about the long run

Some people would be happy with just one job; And instead are selling their medications on the street or prostituting so they can keep gas in their car, which is also their home, running on cold winter nights.

Sure poor people do get creative at stretching their dollars, but rich people get creative at finding ways to make their life more convenient, pleasurable or exotic.

... That is not what "adversity is the mother of invention" means. It means that when people get in trouble, they get creative. It doesn't mean there aren't other motivations for creativity, it just means that nothing motivates a person better than statements ending with "or die." Much of our advancement from a pre-agricultural society to present was based on scarcity of a resource. It's also the principle reason why we commit acts of violence. Desperation focuses the mind like nothing else does. That does not mean we should strive to make a society of desperate people, nor does it justify having so many desperate people so a few can live in superfluous abundance.

It seems painfully obvious to me that a society that prizes personal liberty would know that personal freedoms don't mean much to the starving, sick, or weak. All they want is to not be starving, sick, or weak. Our founding document for this country talks about "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" as essential and undeniable. Why then, do we allow an increasingly smaller number of our population to actually achieve those in any meaningful capacity?

Wealth inequity is destroying our way of life. There is no justification for it: Every argument you can make for it I can just point to any of the other 19 largest countries (by GDP) and say "No. Wrong." We don't need to be paying CEOs 450 times the income of their lowest-paid worker... in Japan, it's about 23 times. Nobody's going to sit here and tell me the Japanese do not find ways to make their live more convenient, pleasurable, or exotic. They're designing fully animatronic sex dolls right now for shits and giggles... and there are not many Japanese starving to death or dying of preventable causes per capita compared to us.

Give me an example, any example, of where a multibillionaire, through the act of hoarding money, has benefited society. There aren't any. So we're left with the idea that we need to reward people with billions of dollars. Why? What service does a single person provide that can be worth so much? I can at least entertain the idea that there might be someone, amongst the nearly 7 billion currently on this planet, that may be able to provide some insight, some product, some innovation, so valuable as to justify this.

But I can't find any examples.

Re:Interesting questions

[Teancum]

If you have been working at McDonald's for 20-30 years and still are a grill cook, either you have some serious mental handicaps, are a total jackass that make you unpromotable, or you are deliberately sabotaging your career in other ways. I have no problems for the mentally challenged in this country being able to do something useful with their lives by being a grill cook either, but somebody who has the mental capacity to do more should over time.

At the very least, after 30 years of working at McDonald's you should be managing your own restaurant, if not being in a position of higher management. Opportunities even exist for somebody who is a career McDonald's employee like that to own their restaurant or at least be earning a very respectable salary. It takes hard work and dedication to the job, but not much more.

For folks who either have incredibly bad luck by getting hired by company after company who is closing down, or if you are such a lazy jerk that you don't bother showing up for work or do something equally stupid like picking a fist fight with your boss on a regular basis....of course you are going to struggle throughout your life and be incapable of holding down a steady job.

If you have the attitude to work hard and show some respect to your potential employer, you will usually be able to hold down a job for a reasonable length of time. You may end up quitting that job at McDonald's, but that is because you have a higher paying job. It may be a gamble to quit and move on to another employer, but that is a risk you take in life for any such career move.

This doesn't even cover those who may follow a more entrepreneurial route to achieve their life goals, but lazy people shouldn't be rewarded for being lazy.

Re:Quietly?

[RocketAcademy]

How does a company quietly put out a press release?

By releasing it after the close of business on Friday, prior to a three-day holiday. Better still, do it while another company is grabbing all the headlines.