Virgin Orbit UK, the UK-based subsidiary of US launch vehicle operator Virgin Orbit, filled its annual accounts for 2021 on December 20. The document was mostly administrative since it detailed fixed assets of just £955 and cash in hand of £1,320. The document also declared that the company had zero employees after more than a year of operation having been founded in August 2019. This is, however, a report detailing the status of the company as of the end of 2021 with the report for 2022 only due at the end of next year.
In place of the self-reported employee counts for 2022, one would assume that the company’s recruiting efforts would give a clear indication of how significant a presence the company has in the UK. Right now, Virgin Orbit has approximately 150 vacancies open on its LinkedIn page all of which are no older than two weeks, and some of which had been posted just hours before this examination. The vacancies were for positions in El Segundo, Long Beach, and Mojave, with the vast majority being located onsite in Long Beach. There was, however, not a single vacancy for the company’s operations in the UK.
On the careers page of the company’s website, not only are there no vacancies in the UK, but the location filter doesn’t even have the UK as an option.
A single-operator launch facility
Spaceport Cornwall is a horizontal launch facility. This severely limits the number of potential operators that would be interested in the facility. In the UK, Orbit Boy and Astraius are both developing horizontally launched systems. Further afield, Virgin Orbit has a horizontally launched system in operation and Dark in France is developing its own. Other than those four operators, there aren’t many, if any, others.
Orbit Boy seems to be mostly dormant, Dark is exploring launching from France, and Astraius has committed to launching from Prestwick Spaceport 30 miles southwest of Glasgow, Scotland.
Sierra Space signed a memorandum of understanding with Spaceport Cornwall in 2021 to explore the possibility of landing its Dream Chaser vehicles at the facility. However, since that announcement, there has been no further discussion regarding the progress of the project.
As a result, Spaceport Cornwall is more or less going to be exclusively used by Virgin Orbit with no other operator currently having committed to launching from the facility.
According to the Virgin Orbit launch licence application, the company has committed to no more than two flights per year from Spaceport Cornwall up until 2030. That’s a total of 16 flights over eight years. For context, SpaceX had managed that many launches within the first five months of 2022.
Funding and taxes
In 2019, Virgin Orbit UK was awarded £7.35 million in funding to “enable horizontal launch of small satellites at Cornwall Airport Newquay.” At the time, the company also pledged to invest £2.5 million of its own money in the project. What’s interesting is that neither the funding nor the pledge from Virgin Orbit appears in the company’s UK filings. It would appear that Virgin Orbit, in 2020 and 2021 at least, received that funding, didn’t keep it in the country, didn’t hire any employees, and didn’t pay any taxes. Filings for 2022 may paint a different picture but all signs point to a continuation of the trend.
At the time the funding was announced, the UK Space Agency projected that Spaceport Cornwall “could create 150 immediate jobs.” There may have been a handful of jobs created during the construction of the integration hanger but how a spaceport that is being used twice a year is directly employing 150 people is a little baffling.
The £7.35 million awarded to Virgin Orbit was expected to be followed up with £10 million in funding from the Cornwall local government, but there does not appear to be a record of that element being approved.
Free advertising
Despite seemingly bringing no substantive benefit to the UK, Virgin Orbit has received a hero’s welcome from the country’s space agency and government. Both entities have spoken breathlessly about how the company is bringing launch capabilities to the UK for the first time in its history. Dignitaries from the UK government, including former prime minister Boris Johnson, visited Cornwall to espouse the virtues of Virgin Orbit, with Johnson even donning a Virgin Orbit flight jacket with “Prime Minister” embroidered on the left breast. All this for a photo opportunity during the maiden flight and then two flights a year for eight years. It seems like Virgin Orbit have made one of the most valuable public relations investments in its short history.
Correction: A previous version speculated that Astraius may be interested in launching from Spaceport Cornwall. However, the company has already agreed to launch from Prestwick Spaceport in the UK.
