What would have been a historic launch attempted by Virgin Orbit (NASDAQ: VORB) this week ended in failure, and investors are wondering how many more attempts the Richard Branson-backed space stock can afford. The crash caused Virgin Orbit shares to go in a free fall, down as much as 26.5% for the week, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Virgin Orbit is the lesser known of two space start-ups spawned out of Branson's Virgin Group. Virgin Galactic, which is attempting to ferry tourists into space, has dealt with its own questions about viability. Now, coming off of this failure, Virgin Orbit is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

This week's planned launch of a number of small satellites was to be the first from European soil and was watched by an estimated 75,000 viewers on the company's live stream. The initial phase of the launch seemed to go as planned, but the company said:

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Source Fool.com