As someone who has been in hiring processes for multiple of those companies, I can tell you that at least RFA's and PLD's vacancies are "virtual", in the sense that for the most part they aren't actually hiring for those positions, but rather collecting leads for when they need to fill them. If you remove those, you get a more realistic picture, since those alone contribute almost half of the "newspace" vacancies in Europe.
In my view, Virgin Orbit's primary problem was that their platform is not scalable. It's simply not practical to build a larger carrier vehicle and because the rocket launches on its side, it needs to have extremely rigid walls. At best, Virgin was always going to be a niche player.
"A generally accepted baseline for funding a launch startup is that a company requires approximately €100 million to get from founding to a maiden launch. "
This seems very low, where is the number coming from?
What leadership changes mean for launch industry
As someone who has been in hiring processes for multiple of those companies, I can tell you that at least RFA's and PLD's vacancies are "virtual", in the sense that for the most part they aren't actually hiring for those positions, but rather collecting leads for when they need to fill them. If you remove those, you get a more realistic picture, since those alone contribute almost half of the "newspace" vacancies in Europe.
In my view, Virgin Orbit's primary problem was that their platform is not scalable. It's simply not practical to build a larger carrier vehicle and because the rocket launches on its side, it needs to have extremely rigid walls. At best, Virgin was always going to be a niche player.
"A generally accepted baseline for funding a launch startup is that a company requires approximately €100 million to get from founding to a maiden launch. "
This seems very low, where is the number coming from?