Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company is set to become the first publicly-available company of its kind to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Virgin Galactic will be making its debut on the NYSE on October 28, 2019, three days after it completes a shareholder-approved $800m USD merger with Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital Hedosophia holding company. The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft will be carrying six lucky passengers into the surface of space for $250,000 USD per ticket, and this is scheduled to commence on the first half of 2020.

Virgin Galactic stated that it already has 600 people signed up for the program and is reportedly already sourcing customers for research missions, too. The trading on Monday will be the test for how viable the public think Virgin Galactic will be as a business model, however, with each flight generating $1.5m USD in revenue, it could become the benchmark for space travel for consumers.

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