What happened
File this story under "what goes up must come down."
Remember how, earlier this week, shares of Virgin Galactic (SPCE -5.56%) stock tanked when its archrival in space tourism, Blue Origin, announced that comedian Pete Davidson had agreed to fly on its upcoming fourth commercial spaceflight next week? Well, it turns out that's not going to happen after all.
And all of a sudden, Virgin Galactic stock is back up 4.8% (as of 1:30 p.m. EDT).
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
As Blue Origin tweeted last night, because of a change in flight schedule, its New Shepard space rocket will launch not on March 23 as planned, but on March 29 instead. And it seems this new date just doesn't work with Mr. Davidson's schedule, so he's not flying after all.
Blue Origin's 20th flight of New Shepard has shifted to Tuesday, March 29. Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission. We will announce the sixth crew member in the coming days.
-- Blue Origin (@blueorigin) March 18, 2022
Now what
Seriously? Blue Origin changes the date on which it's offering Davidson (what appears to be) a free rocket ride to space, and he says "pass"? Without even giving an explanation!?
I mean, on the one hand, I suppose this is no skin off of Blue Origin's nose cone. By all indications, Davidson wasn't paying for his ticket. (The company had previously announced the comedian would fly along with "five customers," which suggested that he himself was not technically a paying "customer" at all). Now, Blue Origin can presumably resell the ticket, that it was planning to give Davidson gratis, to a paying customer instead.
On the other hand -- and more relevant to Virgin Galactic -- Davidson's casual rejection of Blue Origin's offer doesn't quite fit with the narrative that these companies are selling once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that are worth the cost: $250,000, $450,000, or even $28 million!
That's not necessarily good news for Virgin Galactic either, of course. But at least in this particular case, Virgin won't be watching from the sidelines again as Blue Origin scores yet another PR win and expands its lead over Virgin Galactic.
