Virgin Galactic shares soar after successful test flight

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley reports the latest on Virgin Galactic’s test flight.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Virgin Galactic took one step closer to completing development of its space tourism system this past weekend after successfully completing its first space flight in nearly two years. And our tech editor, Dan Howley, is here now with much more. Big day for-- big weekend for Richard Branson and team.

DAN HOWLEY: That's right. They broke Mach 3 and essentially went to 55 miles in space. They did it using the space plane Unity. And what happened was they have flown up on the carrier ship that they have. That's the [? Eve. ?] And essentially, it looks like kind of a super wide plane with two fuselages kind of melted together. And in the middle is where the Unity sits. And they took it up to a few thousand feet and then just dropped the ship, basically. And then its rockets take over and send it shooting up into space.

And 55 miles is the point that the federal government says is where you cross into actual outer space. So that's really one of the big things here was ensuring that they were able to get up to that point and then return, obviously, safely. They glided back down and returned to the same space port that they had left for in New Mexico. They obviously had a big kind of shout out to New Mexico, where they're going to have their tourism program going, with a picture of the sun that's on the New Mexico flag on the Unity itself.

But really, kind of a big day here. Richard Branson saying that it was fantastic. Electric was something that he was quoted as calling it. And obviously, this kind of puts a cap in the hat of Virgin Galactic, saying that it can do this. And they're able to do this in [INAUDIBLE] flights and do it again. Again, this was the third flight in two years. They had had delays recently in December and I believe February due to some mechanical problems. But this seemed to go completely the way it needed to.

KRISTIN MYERS: So Dan, obviously, Virgin Galactic isn't the only space company that is out there. What's happening over with Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin?

DAN HOWLEY: Yes, so this is also part of a race now almost for the space tourism industry. We knew that that was going to happen when Jeff Bezos talked about Blue Origin and sending people up. Obviously, Richard Branson talking about Virgin Galactic essentially being-- you know, it's a space tourism company and offering the seats that they have now. They have a few hundred people set up to take flights. They just need to get them on board. And eventually, Branson himself later this year is expected to take a flight.

But Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos are hot on their heels. And they're saying that they're going to have one of their first manned flights later this year on the anniversary of Apollo 11. So they are nipping at Virgin Galactic's heels. As I said, $250,000 for a seat on their spaceship, the Orion-- or sorry, the Blue Origin. And eventually, we could have more than one, as we talked about Tesla and SpaceX. They're going into the tourism sector. So there could be potentially three different options for people to fly into space if they want to. I think it's a cool idea. I'm definitely not doing it.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I'm with you. Very cool. Not me, not first, no thanks. But we'll keep an eye on it all. All right, Dan Howley, thanks a lot.