Richard Branson’s history of failed rocket launches revealed

Not content with winning the billionaire space race and experiencing the feeling of weightlessness himself, Sir Richard Branson wants to conquer low-Earth orbit and make it his own.

The Virgin founder plans to carry out his first space tourism mission from the US later this year and has grand visions of tapping into the £4 billion satellite industry, in part with the help of the new £20 million Spaceport Cornwall.

But those aspirations were dealt a bitter blow on Monday night when Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, which had hitched a ride on a specially-adapted 747 jumbo jet that took off from the Newquay site, failed to reach orbit and was ultimately lost.

It is not the first time Branson’s Virgin Orbit or Virgin Galactic space ventures have endured failed launches, and it probably won’t be the last — but how does their success rate compare to the likes of SpaceX, Blue Origin and NASA’s now retired Space Shuttle programme?

The bad news for Branson is the answer is not that favourably. 

Analysis by MailOnline reveals that the Virgin owner trails billionaire rivals Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos when it comes to launch success rate percentage.

He sits at 91.35 per cent, while Musk’s SpaceX has logged an impressive 97.1 per cent and Bezos a more than respectable 95.65 per cent.

NASA no longer carries out its own launches — instead relying on Russia and now private companies such as SpaceX following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

But for comparison, that programme had a launch success rate of 98.51 per cent.

There were 133 successful Space Shuttle missions but a total of 14 astronauts perished following the loss of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.

Branson’s most high-profile and catastrophic space launch failure occurred in 2014, when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed in California’s Mojave Desert, killing co-pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injuring pilot Peter Siebold.

The craft was flying a manned test when it experienced what Virgin Galactic described at the time as ‘a serious anomaly’. 

It is one of five launch failures in the 19-year history of Virgin Galactic, compared to 70 successful missions.

Branson, 72, had believed in 2004 that commercial space travel was just three years away, but a string of failures followed which plunged the future of Virgin Galactic into doubt.

In 2007, three people were killed and several others seriously injured when a tank of nitrous oxide detonated and destroyed a test stand.

A further four years after that Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo malfunctioned during re-entry, although its pilots managed to correct the problem. 

There were also two minor setbacks in 2016 involving attempts to carry out the first glide flight for the company’s VSS Unity space plane, while Virgin drew the ire of the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2021.

The regulator accused the rocket firm of not providing the necessary information about Branson’s momentous flight to space in July of that year, after it deviated from its assigned airspace on descent.

The Federal Aviation Administration later lifted a no-fly order on Virgin Galactic in September 2021. 

Virgin Orbit, which was formed in 2017 and has a launch system that has been in operation for just over two years, has now experienced gremlins on 33 per cent of its flights.

As well as the misfiring of the first orbital space launch on British soil last night, its maiden mission in the US also failed, while in between were four successful flights.

The inaugural mission in 2020 went wrong a few seconds after the ignition of the LauncherOne rocket. It was blamed on a premature shutdown of the first stage engine, caused by a break in a propellant feed line, and meant the rocket did not reach orbit. 

But spaceflight is notoriously hard, so what about Virgin’s rivals?

The videos of SpaceX’s reusable rocket boosters either exploding on the launchpad or while attempting to land on a drone ship have been much publicised.

It took the company about four years of trying before a Falcon 9 rocket successfully touched down unscathed in 2015, with SpaceX dramatically scaling up its launch capabilities since then.

Musk’s company has now sent 201 rockets up to space, having had five attempted lift-offs go wrong and one partially fail. 

SpaceX is the market leader in terms of quantity and its Dragon spacecraft is currently being used by NASA to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Musk’s great rival Jeff Bezos – who was beaten into space by Branson by just nine days in 2021 – is somewhat playing catch-up, despite having also sent several celebrities on suborbital flights aboard his New Shepard rocket.

He may have a better success rate than Branson, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Blue Origin has only carried out 23 flights of its New Shepard rocket so far and had one failure — which is why Bezos’ success rate is up at 95 per cent.

That mishap came only a few months ago, when the rocket company was forced to abort a space mission mid-flight.

Its uncrewed booster malfunctioned around a minute after leaving the launchpad in Texas in September, the second such ‘anomaly’ Blue Origin has experienced in its 22-year history.

The first occurred in 2015, when a New Shepard booster crashed instead of landing.

However, its uncrewed capsule successfully reached suborbital space and returned safely, so it cannot be recorded as a failure.

It should be pointed out that spaceflight is never easy and despite Branson’s failures he is still right at the forefront of the race to regularly fly tourists to space, once again hoping to emerge victorious over rivals Bezos and Musk.

Virgin Galactic’s next test flight – Unity 23 – is expected to happen later this year, although it has been repeatedly delayed, and commercial flights will start after that. 

Despite its failure in Cornwall, Virgin Orbit is scheduled to carry out two more satellite launches in the Mojave Desert in January and February, along with four others later in 2023.

Both the UK Space Agency and Spaceport Cornwall have said Virgin Orbit will try another launch in the ‘near future’, but no timeline has been provided by Branson’s company.

It says it will ‘work tirelessly’ to establish the cause of the failed UK launch, but questions remain over the viability of the cash-strapped company’s future.

Shares in Virgin Orbit plummeted by as much as 30 per cent as the drama unfolded in front of the eyes of the world last night, wiping $200 million (£164 million) off the firm’s value.

At the start of November, Branson’s Virgin Group was forced to inject $25 million (£20 million) into the company just days before it reported a net loss of $139.5 million (£117 million) for the first nine months of 2022.

If you enjoyed this article…

Check out this blow-by-blow account of how the historic first orbital launch from British soil FAILED after Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket suffered an ‘anomaly’

What happens next for Virgin Orbit? Richard Branson’s cash-strapped firm fights for survival as it probes what went wrong with Cornwall rocket 

Virgin Orbit’s failed space launch EXPLAINED: How LauncherOne rocket carrying nine satellites experienced an ‘anomaly’