Talk:Virgin Orbit

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Callsign/airline codes

Has Virgin Orbit been assigned an IATA/ICAO airline code yet? -- 70.51.200.162 (talk) 08:09, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Newton Four full-duration hotfire test

Virgin has released video of their 29 June 2017 full-duration hotfire test of their second-stage NewtonFour rocket engine. Here's the video; probably would be reliable sources with published info as well. N2e (talk) 03:45, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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public offering

perhaps the public offering should be mentioned.

https://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-keeps-long-term-focus-as-shares-make-public-debut/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.39.2.48 (talk) 15:15, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The reference above concerns Virgin Galactic, a distinct company from Virgin Orbit within the Virgin Group. Virgin Orbit is a spinoff of Virgin Galctic and is a separate company. Virgin Orbit is not publicly traded.

LauncherOne Section

In the LauncherOne section, the current precedent is to list every launch. This seems a little redundant especially since it has its own article. I propose a rewrite of that section with only the first launch and successful launch. VTVL (talk) 22:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - but despite agreeing :-) I've just edited the section as-is to make the situation with the most recent launch more clear. When I was doing this I noticed how much info about the Cornwall launch was dumped elsewhere in the article, and the secondary sources aren't a great fit with policy either. I think this is because of the difficulty of pulling the headline level needed for this article out of domain sources, which cover the detail needed for the LauncherOne article but aren't the right sources for the "newsworthy" tone of this article. It would be better not to mix the two because I think it would help avoid accidental WP:OR.

If this move takes place it would also fix another issue where the Cornwall launch appears in "other projects" even though it's now a headline historical launch. Zaack23 (talk) 10:49, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mubadala?

I can't find any mention of Virgin Orbit on mubadala.com. What's up with that? Ds77 (talk) 22:41, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Ds77: mubadala.com is a primary source, so less than ideal; it's also not likely to want to acknowledge anything that looks like a bad investment. If you do a Google search on Mubadala Virgin Orbit, you'll find a number of sources that mention an investment, though in my quick search I didn't see a dollar amount; https://parabolicarc.com/2021/12/29/merger-leaves-virgin-orbit-with-less-than-half-of-funding-originally-announced/ , for example. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:17, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And your source says "It is not clear how much ownership Virgin Orbit’s current shareholders — Virgin Group, Mubadala Investment Company, and management and employees — will retain in the merged company." I know that Mubadala owned shares in VORB before it went public. But I think they have sold all their shares since. I checked the SEC filings, and I see that Virgin owns 74.8%, and management owns some, too.

Barron's says the public float is 9.17%

https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/vorb

That would leave about 16% for VORB management, employees, and Mubadala, but it could really be anyone else, too. VORB won't say. I could not find any Mubadala in the SEC filings, so either I missed it or their share is below 5%. Ds77 (talk) Ds77 (talk) 23:55, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]