Virgin Galaxy, founded by Sir Richard Branson, a famous British Virgin brand, has merged with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings (IPOA), founded by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, and the first space travel company in human history will go public tonight under the stock code "SPCE", meaning the English word "Space" space.

Under the merger arrangement, the newly formed Virgin Galaxy is valued at $1.5 billion, so IPOA's share price has fluctuated sharply in recent trading days, rising 11.23% directly after the IPO was confirmed on Friday, and the company's market capitalization now stands at $1.02 billion.

It only takes two and a half hours to walk around the boundary of space.

Virgin Galaxy is a famous Virgin Group that specializes in space suborbital passenger travel. From the first supersonic flight in 2018 to 2019, the company plans to provide commercial services in 2020 after successfully completing the achievement of carrying test passengers, arriving in suborbital space and returning safely.

There are many kinds of space travel. Musk Space X wants to take you to Mars, while another big shot Bezos is going to land on the moon. Virgin currently offers the most reliable suborbital flight experience, which refers to the airspace 20-100 kilometers above the ground, between the highest flight altitude of existing aircraft and the lowest orbital altitude of the satellite.

1. Virgin Galactic luxury Tour

Virgin Galactic's launch site is located in New Mexico, USA, which is a typical desert climate with plenty of sunshine, dry and little rain all year round, which is very conducive to the launch of spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic has invested more than $200m in the Spaceport America launch site, which has 6000 square miles of restricted area, to build the infrastructure needed for the launch.

The entire five-day space trip, during which Virgin also offers a visit to the launch center, physical fitness training, flight aerospace training and other services, and finally on the fifth day, you will take a spaceship that Virgin has invested more than $1 billion into the sky.

2. The spaceship will take you to fly

The SS2 spacecraft is a vehicle that carries passengers into suborbital space. It is built by Scaled Composites, a company known for its composite materials and unconventional designs, and uses a single hybrid rocket engine with a top speed of more than Mach 3.

The mother ship WK2, known as "White Knight 2" in Chinese, will first carry the spaceship SS2. After entering an altitude of 45,000 feet, the spaceship SS2 will separate from the mother ship. 60 seconds of rocket propulsion will increase the speed to Mach 3, directly sending you 50 miles to the sky, that is, more than 80 kilometers from the ground, after reaching the space boundary defined by the US Air Force and feeling the experience of microgravity. Re-enter the atmosphere and return.

Of course, space travel is not only fun, but also can carry out satellite launch, scientific research experiments, energy exploration and other work in the future.

3. The reservation has been accepted now

Space travel costs $250000, and the SS2 spacecraft needs two pilots for each flight and can take six passengers at a time, that is, $1.5 million for a trip to Virgin. Virgin currently has two SS2 spaceships and plans to expand to five by 2023.

Passengers from more than 60 countries have booked space trips, including the famous Hollywood movie star Xiao Li and pop singer Justin Bieber. The number of bookings has exceeded 600, and the deposit received by the company has reached 80 million US dollars.

Second, the market is very segmented, but very rich

With so many people booking Virgin's space travel, and this year's rich Japanese spending 250 million to book the first lunar flight around the Space X, is the market for space travel very large?

The $250000 threshold has shut out the vast majority of people, and space travel is aimed at that small group of people. Although the market is very segmented, each person in it is richer than the other. According to US Chamber of Commercial, the space travel market will grow from $385 billion in 2017 to $1.5 trillion by 2040, a compound annual growth rate of 6 per cent.

The company predicts that with the continuous improvement of technology and the reuse of vehicles, launch costs will continue to reduce, and more and more passengers will experience space travel, and it is these growing customers that will become the guarantee of the company's future performance. And this increasing number of passengers, the company is expected to reach a total of 3242 by 2023, compared with the earth's population of more than 7 billion, not even a hair on the nine cattle.

What is a high net worth customer? These are!

And Virgin is certainly not the only one attracted by these high net worth customers.

As mentioned above, Musk's Space X attempts to build flights to Mars, while the "Blue Origin" of Blue Origin established by Amazon.Com Inc's boss Bezos is to take all suborbits, low-Earth orbits, earth-moon orbits, and he covers everything between the earth and the moon.

Therefore, the competition for these high net worth customers is still quite fierce.

Third, Virgin's boss has never been afraid of competition.

Although he has to face a new generation of entrepreneurs such as Musk and Bezos in space travel, Virgin's boss, Sir Richard Branson, can be called a "legend".

1. Do not like learning and love business

Branson didn't like to learn from an early age, saying he was dyslexic and didn't have a college degree, but he had a full grade at the skill point of business talent.

He founded a magazine at the age of 16 and successfully fooled reporters by pretending to talk to well-known writers, thus expanding his influence. With a capital of only £4, he launched Britain's most popular Student magazine, with interviews with John Lennon of the Beatles and Jagger of the Rolling Stones.

When he started the magazine, he discovered the business opportunity of mail order for records, and then set up a record company. later, he signed up to the then famous Rolling Stones and Sex Pistols, which became the largest independent record company in the world at that time, with a valuation of up to US $1 billion.

In 1994, when the record business was in its heyday, he entered the aviation industry with a very high threshold and had a discussion with British Airways, which was in a monopoly position at that time, and adopted a low-price strategy to provide value-added services such as airport transportation. Now it has become a world-renowned airline.

2. Internet celebrities bring goods to the originator.

If there were Douyin and Kuaishou Technology at that time, there is no reason why Richard Branson should not become a traffic star and online celebrity with goods.

In addition to records and aviation, Virgin also covers cosmetics, wedding dresses, beverages, telecommunications and even condoms, covering more than 400 industries, 35 countries and global revenue of $21 billion.

To promote his Virgin Coke, Branson drove his own tank to crush Coca-Cola Company in Times Square and promoted Virgin phones on the streets of London and more than 20 naked models.

Willing to lose gambling, shave your legs, act as a stewardess, run naked, sail in hot air balloons, and rescue hostages in the Middle East. Rebellious, adventurous, creative, funny, hippie, it is such a slightly cynical person who has created such a huge Virgin business empire.

Now, the tentacles of the empire are beginning to reach out into space.

IV. Virgin Galactic's "three-step" strategy

Virgin Galactic currently has zero debt, and yes, how can a company that relies on its big boss, a tuhao giant, be in debt?

After listing, the company also has a "three-step" strategy: the first stage is to complete the commercial operation of the space launch; the second stage is to expand the scale and increase the number of spacecraft, fleets and global stations; and the third stage is to reach a point-to-point voyage.

In fact, the audience of space travel is too small, and the real demand is peer-to-peer long-distance flights, especially peer-to-peer flights between well-known cities around the world.

Virgin expects the market to reach $900 billion for commercial flights and $600 billion for tourist flights. In the future, the company will provide supersonic flights, greatly saving flight time and making another change to the existing aviation industry.

Today, the listing of Virgin Galaxy can be said to be a big advertisement for Virgin Group.

Sir Branson will hold 51 per cent of the company when it goes public, retaining absolute control of the company, while aviation hegemon Boeing Co has also invested $20 million.

The company itself expects to be profitable in 2021, with an EBITDA of $12 million, which can be estimated based on the number of launches and scheduled customers, valuing the company at $1.5 billion under the contract.

Conclusion: a small step for the company and a big step for the industry

From Wanhu to the Wright brothers, from Gagarin to Armstrong; from planes to rockets, from curvature engines to wormholes. People's reverie about the sky and space has never stopped.

Tonight's listing of Virgin Galaxy may be a small step for the company, but it could be a big step for the commercial capitalization of the entire space travel.