Virgin Galactic unveiled a new partnership Tuesday that pushes the throttle forward on its plans for commercial suborbital space travel and a new small satellite launch capacity.
The deal involves Abu Dhabi's Aabar Investments and Virgin Galactic, the commercial spaceliner group bankrolled by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson to fly "pay-per-view" customers to the edge of space.
Specifics of the partnership, which includes Aabar investing $280 million in Virgin Galactic in return for an equity stake, were outlined today at the Experimental Aircraft Association's (EAA) AirVenture convention in Oshkosh, Wisc., which is now under way.
The article is muddled. Any better sources out there?
Here's another article referencing the satellite deal
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50a781a2-7bd8-11de-9772-00144feabdc0.html
saying that $100M of the investment was to kick start development of a satellite launcher. Wicked cool!