Former Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart on the Milestones, Hopes, and Heartbreaks of Virgin Orbit’s Journey

In 2017, Dan Hart left his 34-year career at Boeing to embark on a new adventure as CEO of Virgin Orbit. Working for Richard Branson’s startup was the opportunity of a lifetime during the heyday of new space, and the company enjoyed a string of successes before the company filed for bankruptcy in April 2023.

Virgin Orbit made history in 2021 by validating LauncherOne, the first orbital class, air-launched, liquid-fueled rocket to successfully reach space. The company had four successful missions, deploying 33 satellites, for customers including the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, SatRevolution, and Spire, along with plans to expand launch service and commercial spaceports around the globe. It was a surprise to many when Virgin Orbit shuttered operations, especially considering the lack of diversity in launch suppliers.

Via Satellite recently caught up with Hart, who resides in Long Beach, California, to talk about his career, what went wrong at Virgin, and the critical lessons that entrepreneurs can glean from his experiences.

VIA SATELLITE: You launched your career in the space industry in 1983. What was that like?

Hart: I was so lucky. I was part of Spacelab in the early Space Shuttle days, under the wing of engineers who had worked on programs like Gemini and Apollo. Spacelab was the first real European-U.S. collaboration in space of any size. Very international. I got to go to Europe on my first business trip for a year and worked with the German engineers.

VIA SATELLITE: You worked at Boeing for 34 years — until you got a call from Richard Branson in 2017 at Virgin. What was that big career jump like?

Hart: I was leading Boeing’s Government Satellites Division and had an incredible portfolio —X-37 Spaceplane, GPS, WGS, TDRS, satellites in the classified area — but I had been with Boeing for 34 years. The idea of moving to another culture, and the energy that Richard brings, and the vision that he brings, was really enticing. It was also getting back into a big, hands-on development program like the ones I grew up [with]. It was returning back from a career point of view, and then moving forward in a new, faster, visionary culture — and it was doing something that had never been done. Really exciting stuff.

VIA SATELLITE: How was working for Virgin Orbit different than working for Boeing?

Hart: At a large company, you deal with a lot of layers of bureaucracy and a certain amount of politics. Change is often very slow, even change to adopt a new great idea. At Virgin, we were agile and lean. The leadership was trimmed down to the bare bones. We made decisions quickly, and took risks — it was very liberating, moving into that environment, but still we felt the weight of responsibility. The [culture] was high octane — with a lot of people coming into the business from school or other startups and some space veterans like me sprinkled in. The mix spawned real, forward-leaning ideas that were sometimes adopted overnight.

VIA SATELLITE: What did you see as some of the drivers of the New Space economy at the time?

Hart: Certainly SpaceX was a catalyst, but the technology in small satellites may have been even more important. All of a sudden, you had satellites that were a fifth of the size of [Iridium] that could actually do meaningful work — that weren't just objects of curiosity — and that was huge. You had an architectural change starting to take root in space. I was very much aware of that back at Boeing because I was building satellites and I was seeing that transformation happening. There was also a lot of activity on the national security side with the emergence of contested space. China took out one of their satellites in 2007, a Russian satellite did something strange, and suddenly the space environment is simmering and starting to boil. A ‘cat and mouse’ in space started to happen, similar to submarines under the Arctic during the Cold War.

Let’s not forget capital. There was a lot of private money funding development. That enabled commercial contracts that empowered teams to create space systems in a commercial-like way.

VIA SATELLITE: Let’s talk about your time at Virgin Orbit. What was it like to experience some of the six successful missions that the company had and some of the early milestones?

Hart: First of all, this was a new system. No one's ever done a liquid rocket leaving an airplane that goes into orbit, so it was a completely new method with some new technology associated with it and new risks. We were a human-assisted launcher so safety was constantly on my mind. Whether this new approach would work was a question mark and when it did it was amazing.

I remember our first successful launch on Martin Luther King’s birthday in 2021. When the rocket makes orbit the amount of pressure that gets released into your body to where every neuron in your head lights up — you get this warm glow. When you suddenly see years of brutally hard work come together and succeed you can barely relate to people except having this kind of silly smile on your face, looking at each other, like 'Do you believe this? You know, it all worked! It all worked!’ I was so proud of that team.

When Richard called, I think he was laughing and crying at the same time. Unbeknownst to him, and just before the launch, we had named the rocket for his mom who had just passed away days before. Eve Branson had carried the day.

We had four good flights in a row like that, where confidence was building. To our amazement, orbital accuracy was phenomenal and we found that the system almost never scrubbed on launch days — 747s and their pilots like to fly. We were learning more about the system and adjusting, every time was absolutely amazing. We were launching for customers on the cutting edge, launching from an airport, and U.S. government agencies and countries across the world were taking notice.

VIA SATELLITE: Let's talk about when things got hard. What went wrong? What challenges and obstacles came up?

Hart: There were basically four areas that impacted us. Number one was we didn't raise enough money. Our closest competitor had raised over three times what we had. That put us in a position where we couldn’t diversify, and operations had to be close to perfect for us to be successful. The investment market pretty much closed down in 2022 as we worked our way into low-rate production when a raise would have been helpful. In early 2023, in the middle of a critical fund raise, we experienced a mission failure.

Number two was the market had shifted during our development — the commercial smallsat launch market was impacted first by large rockets. Soyuz started to take up OneWeb, [which was] our big customer initially when the company was created in 2017. And then SpaceX came in with their Transporter [rideshare] missions and pulled the price down for small commercial satellite launches. Also, there were aspirational launchers that were giving very low introductory pricing. Commercial pricing was basically depressed, so we pivoted over to focus on government, U.S. national security responsive space, where we had a unique capability providing allied governments like the U.K. with launch. Governments are slow, however, and we needed revenue and backlog — indications to excite investors.

Third, we had plans to diversify into the satellite services sector, but with our limited cash we weren't able to do that, eliminating options. The fourth issue was COVID. We went to launch in May of 2020 for the first time. We couldn't even talk to each other face to face. Remote and hybrid work, critical teams periodically shutting down with contagion, and an intense development/operations program didn’t mix well. Our efficiency tanked.

VIA SATELLITE: What are some of the lessons learned that others can take away from your experience, especially if they’re starting out?

Hart: Number one is always fly. No space program succeeds sitting on the ground, and we succeeded in carefully managing risk and moving forward. Obviously, cash is king. And you need to have contingency because hard issues will come up every day. And hit the investment market when it's hot. I mean, urgently.

On the pricing side, I do see companies waging war in pricing, and the launch companies doing that are certainly helping satellite companies get started. But it’s not sustainable. The companies that are launching don’t seem to be making money even after dozens of launches. Is there an adjustment that needs to take place? That would be something for people to think about, what is strategic pricing in today's market? And another [thing] is to consider carefully how the market is developing. It's a new market. The architectures are changing, the applications are changing. So keep an eye on your customer and your customer’s customer. And know that government organizations are complex.

VIA SATELLITE: What do you have any thoughts on the future of New Space?

Hart: There's a huge amount going on. It’s an incredibly exciting time. You've got Artemis that's moving us forward to Lunar, and there are a ton of commercial activities and international programs associated with that. And then you still have this growth in this new small satellite architecture associated with both space defense and security, and new commercial applications. A lot of opportunities.

I'd also say that some space remote sensing companies have been disappointed in the pace of pickup in the industrial sectors. That said, there is huge potential there. I think what's going to need to happen is the analytics needs to develop more to [the point where] information and the data can be served to those companies in forms they can easily absorb and buy. There’s work needed here, applications for AI, but there's steady growth that's going to happen for a long time.

And then the other piece is the global aspect. If you're going to be a modern country, 10 years from now, you're going to have a vibrant space program. Your economy and security are going to be wrapped up, in part, with what you can do with space and satellites, and the sovereignty of your satellite communication and remote sensing. One of the things I’m proudest of is when Virgin Orbit launched from Western Europe. It was the first attempt ever made and it showed the U.K. and many other countries what the future holds.

VIA SATELLITE: What kind of impact do you think Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have on the industry? What do you think that does to the industry?

Hart: They've had an enormous, positive impact. They’ve shown us what humans can accomplish when they're unleashed and empowered, when creative, new ideas are encouraged. The amount of innovation you've seen would not have happened without them. And they've helped to create the next generation of space professionals. I'd say that's their legacy. As we look forward, the space community has broadened out so much. There are so many entities and organizations and leaders and teams. Are they needed to push it forward? I don't think so. But they jump-started this revolution and it’s rocketing forward. VS