How many people can fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space plane?

Virgin Galactic conducted its first successful suborbital flight of its SpaceShipTwo, designated Unity 25, in May 2023 carrying six people aboard. That allowed the American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate to begin sending paying customers to just beyond the edge of space.

Roughly once a month, a handful of space tourists have gotten the opportunity to gaze down on Earth and experience about four minutes of weightlessness. However, none of the SpaceShipTwo Unity flights have been at full capacity to date.

How many people can fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space plane?

As of the Galactic 06 flight, Virgin Galactic has minted 26 new astronauts. While the spacecraft can seat six passengers in addition to the two pilots, each of the flights has only carried at most four paying customers.

Virgin Galactic has a long backlog of prepaid customers

Virgin Galactic currently only has just the SpaceShipTwo Unity to ferry people into space. However, the company has had two more spacecraft under construction since 2016. At one flight per month taking the current number of passengers on each, it will take well over a decade for the company to get through its backlog of prepaid customers.

Over 600 people paid between $200,000 and $250,000 during the first early bird ticket listings. And around another 200 forked over $450,000 when tickets went on sale once again in 2021.

Some of those prepaid tickets could date back to mid-2000s when tickets first went on sale. But according to one of those that bought early, his 18-year wait for the approximately two-and-a-half-hour ride and a few minutes of weightlessness was well worth it.

The first Virgin Galactic space tourists

“It was far more dramatic that I might have imagined it would be,” said Jon Goodwin about his flight aboard Galactic 02, who had bought his ticket in 2005. “Without a doubt the most exciting day of my life.”

He was on the first Galactic flight to carry space tourists. The previous flight Galactic 01 was a research flight for the Italian Air Force.

Goodman, who represented Great Britain in the 1972 Summer Olympics, was joined by Keisha Schahaff and her daughter Anastatia Mayers. Keisha won two seats in the Omaze competition and invited her daughter, who wants to be a space biologist, along for the trip.

He became first Olympian and the second person with Parkinsons to fly into space. The mother and daughter, from Antigua and Barbuda respectively, became the first from the Caribbean to fly into space.