Virgin Galactic finishes Mesa spaceship facility as key part of space tourism

MESA, AZ — More than just flights, a lot of ‘business’ is taking place at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.

“We'd like to say it's a 3,000-acre economic development project that just happens to have a growing passenger airport that serves 2 million passengers,” said Ryan Smith, Director Communications and Government Relations of Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, to ABC15.

The month of May marked the busiest month for Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport history. But there’s more than just flying passengers making this airport their ‘lift off’ spot.

Virgin Galactic announced the completion of its new manufacturing facility at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport; the building took nearly two years to complete.

Mesa is now the new home for the commercial spaceline where they'll be making the “final assembly of its next-generation Delta spaceships,” said Smith.

“The great thing about Virgin Galactic is it means jobs here in the southeast Valley […] Virgin Galactic is going to continue to launch their space tourism from New Mexico. So, we won't have spaceships launching from here but they're going to do all of their manufacturing of their spaceships and the maintenance of their ‘mothership’ here in Mesa. That means manufacturing jobs, mechanics and all of those things that come along with that kind of activity,” said Smith.

According to the commercial spaceline, spaceship assembly is expected to begin in 2025 at the new facility.

“The completion of our new manufacturing facility is an important milestone in the development of our fleet of next-generation spaceships, the key to our scale and profitability,” said Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic CEO, in a public statement published on the company’s website. “Tooling will begin arriving in a matter of months to support spaceship final assembly, which we expect to commence in Q1 2025.”

BREAKING THINGS DOWN: MOTHERSHIP & SPACESHIPS

Let’s be honest- spaceships and a ‘mothership’ in the Valley aren’t words we commonly hear. So, what’s the scoop on the new spaceship manufacturing facility? Let’s start off with its mothership.

“[Virgin Galactic has a] program where you have a mothership, a main aircraft that takes a spaceship connected to the bottom of it, it takes it up to space -with space tourists inside- it releases it, and those tourists get to experience weightlessness and get to experience being in outer space. [ Then]it goes back and lands there in New Mexico. Those spaceships will be manufactured here in Mesa, they'll be maintained, and they'll be looked over and fixed, if anything ever […] needs to be fixed. And so will be a key part of that space tourism,” said Smith.

With the completion of the building, residents may “start seeing the mothership and those spaceships coming in, in and out of the Valley.”

“We very often have large cargo planes come in and out and so having the Virgin Galactic mothership – Eve, she's called- [and it] will just be one more one more unique kind of aircraft that comes and visits here at Gateway,” shared Smith with ABC15 and added that Eve will fly into the state since it “takes off like a regular airplane.”

“So, it'll come in and out for maintenance and it'll be here. You'll see it landing, it won't have the spaceship attached, that's reserved for New Mexico. But when you see the large mothership, it definitely will stick out,” added Smith.

“An initial team of Virgin Galactic technical operations and manufacturing personnel has begun preparing the facility to receive and install tooling, expected to arrive in Q4 2024. The facility will then begin to receive major subassemblies, including the wing, the fuselage, and the feathering system next year, as the team scales to build the first two ships of the Delta fleet. Once ground testing in Phoenix is complete, Virgin Galactic’s mothership will ferry completed spaceships to Spaceport America, New Mexico for flight test ahead of commercial operations, which are expected to begin in 2026,” read a public statement by Virgin Galactic.

AN AZ LAUNCH?

Virgin Galactic's spaceflight experience is in New Mexico, but could flights eventually take place in the East Valley?

“At this point in time, they're still going to do all of their launching from New Mexico, they've got a whole big setup there […] that they've built there. ‘Never say never,’ We’re happy to be a part of their operations for now. But for now, probably all the launches will continue to happen in New Mexico,” said Smith.