Virgin Galactic Hitches a Ride With Boeing -- to Space!

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) has a dream: to enable anyone who wants to fly to the edge of space -- and has $450,000 burning a hole in their pocket -- to experience a few minutes of weightless flight, and take a gander at Earth's big blue marble.

Hundreds of people have bought tickets to take this trip with Virgin Galactic, and by 2028 some analysts think the company could be sending as many as 2,000 space tourists to space every year. But here's the thing: Right now, Virgin has only one operational spaceplane, capable of carrying six passengers at a time, and one "mothership" to carry that spaceplane to 50,000 feet altitude before releasing it to blast into space. In order to fully realize the company's potential, and achieve Virgin Galactic's stated aim of flying as many as 400 missions a year, generating $2.7 million per flight (so $1.1 billion in annual revenue), Virgin Galactic is going to need a lot more planes.

And I don't just meant spaceplanes -- Virgin Galactic is already basically finished building a second one of those, and has plans to build more -- but also motherships to carry those spaceplanes as well.

Source Fool.com