{"id":408906,"date":"2026-05-02T21:21:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T21:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/408906\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T21:21:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T21:21:30","slug":"visiting-virgin-galactics-spaceship-factory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/408906\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Virgin Galactic\u2019s spaceship factory"},"content":{"rendered":"

After spending time on board a special Virgin Voyages<\/a> sailing with over 1000 wonderful creators on board a couple of weeks ago, I travelled to Arizona to catch up with the Virgin Galactic<\/a> team and see first-hand how their Delta-class spaceship is progressing.<\/p>\n

Michael Colglazier, Mike Moses and the team gave me a tour of the factory and I was delighted to see how well it’s coming on. It was great chatting to the engineers and technicians and seeing them in action. It\u2019s remarkable to see how they have taken VSS Unity, the prototype craft I flew to space in, and developed it to the next level with the new ship.<\/p>\n

\"Virgin<\/p>\n

Virgin Galactic<\/p>\n

What is particularly exciting is the reduced turnaround times the new spaceship is designed for – from a month turnaround with Unity to days with the new ship. This craft is built to carry more astronauts, and the new factory has the ability to produce more new spaceships much more quickly in the future.<\/p>\n

Just yesterday, Virgin Galactic reached a new production milestone, successfully towing the SpaceShip from the assembly hangar to the test and launch hangar, ready to undergo final systems integration and ground testing. <\/p>\n

All of that adds up to more progress towards our dream of human space travel on a regular basis – something only Virgin Galactic is now focused upon. Fewer than 800 people have become astronauts in the history of humankind. We think this is the craft that will enable thousands more people to realise their dream.<\/p>\n

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Like any business, even one working on rocket science, Virgin Galactic remains a group of talented people working towards a common goal. <\/p>\n

In their case, that common goal just happens to be extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Watch this space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After spending time on board a special Virgin Voyages sailing with over 1000 wonderful creators on board a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-408906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}