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.
I think they were trying to pivot to selling the launch system to countries with a shoreline at the wrong angle to launch directly. This would explain why they were prioritizing the UK launch over building up launch experience and revenue in the US on their (claimed) backlog.
They were already in talks with Poland, Japan and maybe a few others
But while I can see the strategic benefit for countries wanting domestic small launch, it would be completely useless to buy the plane without a stack of rockets (or a license to the technology).
And I can not imagine how they were planning to get around ITAR and other US export restrictions on this. (The UK has a special agreement with the US). Somehow in all the articles about their 'rapid deployment' it was never brought up.
"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?
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.
I think they were trying to pivot to selling the launch system to countries with a shoreline at the wrong angle to launch directly. This would explain why they were prioritizing the UK launch over building up launch experience and revenue in the US on their (claimed) backlog.
They were already in talks with Poland, Japan and maybe a few others
But while I can see the strategic benefit for countries wanting domestic small launch, it would be completely useless to buy the plane without a stack of rockets (or a license to the technology).
And I can not imagine how they were planning to get around ITAR and other US export restrictions on this. (The UK has a special agreement with the US). Somehow in all the articles about their 'rapid deployment' it was never brought up.
https://spacenews.com/poland-virgin-orbit-partner-on-eastern-europe-launch-initiative/
"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?