Virgin Galactic photo
Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Unity, a SpaceShipTwo-class suborbital rocket-powered manned spaceplane, shown here during a test flight in California.
Virgin Galactic laid off dozens of employees earlier this month, including three in Las Cruces, as it transitions from building its spaceship in California to launching commercial flights from southern New Mexico.
The layoffs of “around 40 people” at the company’s offices in Mojave, Calif. and Las Cruces were necessary “to position our organization for the drive to commercial operations” and to “make room for new skill sets that we need to bring in over the course of this year,” said Aleanna Crane, Virgin Galactic’s spokeswoman. A source confirmed that three of the eliminated jobs were based in Las Cruces; the others were in Mojave.
Virgin Galactic had increased staff in southern New Mexico from 21 in August 2017 to approximately 43 late last year, according to information provided to state lawmakers by Spaceport America.
The layoffs hit both Virgin Galactic and its sister company, The Spaceship Company, which is building SpaceShipTwo, the craft Virgin Galactic plans to use to fly paying customers into suborbital space. Crane said fewer than 5 percent of employees were laid off.
Following years of delays and two fatal accidents, SpaceShipTwo, which is being built and tested in Mojave, reached an altitude of 51.4 miles, which meets one definition of space, during a test flight in December. It was a significant milestone for Virgin Galactic and New Mexico, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Spaceport America — a spaceport the state built from the ground up in the desert northeast of Las Cruces in the hopes of creating a commercial space hub and a stronger economy.
Virgin Galactic is expected to transition over the coming months from testing in Mojave to commercial operations in New Mexico. Officials from the company and Spaceport America have said dozens more employees will move from California to southern New Mexico once the work in Mojave is complete. The information Spaceport America provided to state lawmakers in November — before the layoffs — predicted Virgin Galactic would have 128 employees in southern New Mexico sometime in 2019.
There’s other evidence Virgin Galactic is preparing for commercial flights. On Thursday, the company announced a partnership with Under Armour to design “spacewear” for its customers and uniforms for its employees in southern New Mexico.
Still, the layoffs could raise eyebrows among spaceport skeptics in New Mexico. The layoffs come while the state Legislature is in session and being asked to provide additional dollars for Spaceport America.
The timeline for commercial flights from Spaceport America still isn’t clear. Crane, the Virgin Galactic spokeswoman, said the company “achieved a historic milestone” with its December test flight and looks forward “to maintaining the great progress towards commercial flight that we established during 2018.”
“We hope and expect to make great strides, but ultimately where we end up in 12 months’ time will be dictated by readiness and safety,” Crane said. “We do expect our next test flight to take place in a matter of weeks rather than months. In the latter stages of our test flight program we plan to relocate to Spaceport America in preparation for commercial service.”
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, who has often made optimistic predictions that haven’t always come true, said Thursday there will be a series of additional test flights of SpaceShipTwo in the coming weeks, and he hopes to be on a commercial flight in mid-2019.
“I will hope to go up in the middle of this year myself,” Branson said on CBS This Morning. “We’ve got another test flight in a handful of weeks taking place from Mojave, then we’ll have another one a few weeks later, then another one. And then we move everything to New Mexico, where we have a beautiful spaceport.”
The commercial space industry, which is currently estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars and growing, is highly competitive. Virgin Galactic isn’t the only company to recently eliminate jobs. SpaceX, whose rockets resupply the International Space Station, recently laid off 577 employees, or about 10 percent of its workforce.
As for Virgin Galactic, Crane said the company is “offering support” to those who lost their jobs and thanks them “for their contributions.”
This article has been updated with Branson’s comments and additional comments from Crane.