Are investors going to like Virgin Galactic?

Virgin Galactic has announced its plan of going public in a merge with Palihapitiya’s cash shell. Virgin Galactic was founded by Richard Branson to provide space travel for tourists. There is a space race undergoing between enterprise. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX are probably the leading companies in this space trace. Virgin Galactic’s craft is limited and the company focuses on providing consumer space travel, which is a rather difficult and narrow field in the space business.

It is difficult because Virgin Galactic wants to take human passengers to the space, and human body is very weak and fragile, keeping humans safe in the space is very expensive and faces lots of technical challenges. Maybe in the future, due to technology development, the cost can be significantly reduced, the space travel will become more appealing to a larger group of people. Furthermore, there are other businesses relating to space. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX have already sent satellites to the space and resupplied the International Space Station. Sending satellites can be very profitable with right technology (reusable rockets) and is a highly demanded service.

Because of these reasons, I do not think Virgin Galactic is going to be an attractive stock for investors, people may see it as the Aston Martin in the space business, and we all see how Aston Martin’s stock performs since its IPO.