Author Topic: Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne  (Read 163036 times)

Offline John-H

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Re: Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne
« Reply #320 on: 04/12/2023 02:32 am »
This is completely laughable that they think they're going to launch once more this year after laying off 675 people. They have about 80-100 people to:
1. Keep the company afloat
2. Complete the Flight 7 Flight 6 (Rocket 7) mishap investigation
3. Implement technical and programmatic corrective actions
4. Finish the construction and acceptance testing of the rocket
5. Continue maintenance and operations of Cosmic Girl
6. Perform the actual launch operations

Keep in mind that the 80-100 people left aren't going to be all their superstars either - if any of those are still around they've probably got applications out to a litany of backup plans to get off the sinking ship.

What might be  completely laughable is that they hired 675 people when 80-100 of them can do all of this.


Offline edkyle99

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Re: Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne
« Reply #321 on: 04/12/2023 05:40 pm »
What might be  completely laughable is that they hired 675 people when 80-100 of them can do all of this.
They were working on a LauncherOne 1.1, so letting go of that development effort, along with the production and test personnel for new engines and rockets freed up most people I suspect.  This bare-bones Chapter 11 crew will only be able to fly out whatever existing hardware they have, perhaps earning some money for the Trustee to use in the reorganization.

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 04/12/2023 05:43 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline whitelancer64

Re: Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne
« Reply #322 on: 04/12/2023 05:50 pm »
This is completely laughable that they think they're going to launch once more this year after laying off 675 people. They have about 80-100 people to:
1. Keep the company afloat
2. Complete the Flight 7 Flight 6 (Rocket 7) mishap investigation
3. Implement technical and programmatic corrective actions
4. Finish the construction and acceptance testing of the rocket
5. Continue maintenance and operations of Cosmic Girl
6. Perform the actual launch operations

Keep in mind that the 80-100 people left aren't going to be all their superstars either - if any of those are still around they've probably got applications out to a litany of backup plans to get off the sinking ship.

What might be  completely laughable is that they hired 675 people when 80-100 of them can do all of this.

80-100 people can't do all that. They'll be a skeleton crew, overworked and under a ton of stress. The main purpose is to keep the company from completely falling apart and preserve what product / company value they can during the Chapter 11 restructuring. 

As Ed said, they likely won't be able to build much of anything new with that few staff.  Assemble existing hardware, sure. Maybe they will be able to fly it.
« Last Edit: 04/12/2023 05:52 pm by whitelancer64 »
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Online edzieba

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Re: Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne
« Reply #323 on: 04/12/2023 06:34 pm »
Rocketlab had ~ 200 staff at the time of the maiden Electron launch, and that was with active R&D still ongoing and the company scaling up. With no further R&D beyond investigating and resolving the Flight 6 issue, and just continuing to produce and operate a frozen design, that's not an impossible task for 100.
Not a particularly fun one, but possibly sustainable with such a massive staff overhead cut as long as they can keep selling launches - Q3 was a $43mn net loss with $30mn revenue, so a ~$73mn quarterly burn. If that scales roughly with staffing, cutting 85% of the workforce bring quarterly burn closer to ~$11mn, within the realm of 4 launches per year being viable as a going concern post-bankruptcy.

Online catdlr

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Re: Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne
« Reply #324 on: 10/22/2024 04:28 am »
https://twitter.com/KevZag/status/1848517506660458705

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