The company announced in October that it was delaying its first commercial flight from the third to the fourth quarter of next year.
The Virgin Galactic space tourism company announced on Monday that it had sold a hundred tickets to travel into space since August for $ 450,000 each.
The current price is well above the $ 200,000 to $ 250,000 paid by 600 customers between 2005 and 2014.
The new fare “has been well received,” the company said in a statement, recalling that its goal is to sell 1,000 tickets before the launch of the first commercial flight scheduled for the end of 2022.
“We are entering a period of fleet improvement with a clear roadmap to increase the durability, reliability and predictability of our commercial service aircraft,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.
“The demand for space travel is strong and we are selling seats faster than we expected,” he added.
The founder of the company, the British Richard Branson, was the first billionaire to fly into space on July 11 in a spaceship of his private company, days before Jeff Bezos did so in a device of his company, Blue Origin.
But the Virgin Galactic spacecraft was temporarily immobilized by US authorities in September after it left the authorized airspace for its maiden mission.
Virgin Galactic announced in October that it was delaying its first commercial flight from the third to the fourth quarter of next year to allow time for safety improvements. The company confirmed on Monday that it maintains that forecast.
Competition among billionaires for space tourism is fierce. In addition to Branson and Bezos, Elon Musk and his company SpaceX sent four space tourists for three days around Earth in September.
Virgin Galactic says it still has nearly $ 1 billion in cash to fund its operations until it is profitable.
In the third quarter of 2021, the company posted a net loss of $ 48 million, less than the $ 92 million it lost in the same period in 2020.
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