Showing posts with label Virgin Enterprises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virgin Enterprises. Show all posts

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Branson’s Booby


Surprise, surprise! The Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space flight has been delayed again … see: Bloomberg Article. Richard Branson, President of Virgin Enterprises, has just announced that the first passenger-carrying flight of his Buck Rogers adventure will be delayed again … until next spring. This is the umpteenth cancellation of this event which was last scheduled for this past August … see: Space Shot. Tom Bower who is writing a book about this British entrepreneur opines (in the first article referenced above) that Branson’s booby (my term … that sea-bird which is notorious for having difficulty taking off) is “unlikely ever to attain its goal of carrying passengers into sub-orbital flight.”

So far this adventure has already collected more than $80 million in deposits (@ $250,000 a pop) from would-be passengers (many famous … see the above article.) Although I have been picking on Richard Branson ... in a way this would be a shame … for such a “failure to launch” would clearly sully what has been Branson’s otherwise larger-than-life life.


Sunday, September 14, 2014

One, Maybe Two, Trick Ponies


Virgin Enterprise's Sir Richard Branson has had some business success ... but some of this infant terrible's  recent promises have  been hollow. He previously had pledged  to contribute $3 billion to cleaning up air pollution ... he has delivered on less than 1/10th of this amount ... see: The Guardian Story. He also has set multiple deadlines for his traveling to the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic "spaceship" ... the latest date being this past August. Suffice it to say he has still not fulfilled this pledge ...  nor is this likely to occur anytime soon ... see: Space Shot.

One has to admire this man's chutzpah ... but, on the other hand, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ... who has outgrown his bank account ... see: Business Insider Story, he sometimes seems to have much more money than brains. Success often does this to entrepreneurs ... give them one round of applause in the center ring ... and they think that they can run the circus.