Boeing will invest $20 million in Virgin Galactic, a vertically integrated human spaceflight company. The companies will work together to broaden commercial space access and transform global travel technologies, representatives of both companies announced on October 8.
"Our work with Virgin Galactic, and others, will help unlock the future of space travel and high-speed mobility," said Brian Schettler, senior managing director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures, in a Virgin Galactic press release.
“This is the beginning of an important collaboration for the future of air and space travel, which are the natural next steps for our human spaceflight programme,” said Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic. “Virgin Galactic and Boeing share a vision of opening access to the world and space, to more people in safe and environmentally responsible ways.”
Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. On December 13, 2018, the company’s VSS Unity spaceplane reached a height of 82,7 km above the earth at speeds close to three times the speed of sound.
