The collection of all those and being able to see almost kind of like through, the French doors looking out on able to use your peripheral vision as you’re above the planet and see the vast pence of space. All that in Unity is amazing and will be carried forward into the Delta ships. Now Unity has things that we want to change, right? It is heavier than the delta ships will be. And so deltas, of course, will come out with six seats, so adding 50% to the capacity along the way. We’re changing the system, the composite system of Delta. And that’s really what’s driving the majority of the work on the engineering side as we update the parts elements for that. So then as you kind of pivot to what is really different in Delta than where we’ve been before.
From an engineered standpoint, not much is different than where they are before. They’re just confirming for me what I’d ask them to be able to deliver is we should be able to turn these ships on a twice a week basis. And as we’ve advanced our design, that charge kind of extra credit charge they had for me, they have been delivering against. So that’s very compelling and that’s why we’re feeling comfortable sharing that with you here today. The — there are smaller things that I think we’re learning around the flight. But the biggest things that we’ve picked, I’d say, a value on this type of call is by understanding what it takes to turn Unity on a month-by-month basis, we know that very specifically. We can target those things specifically in our design and verify it and test so that we don’t need to do all those things like by flight, and that’s how we’re going to turn this so much more quickly.
Myles Walton: And then I wanted to ask on research flights. Would you look to increase your mix in terms of more research versus private astronaut flights before you get to free cash flow positive just given the higher revenue per flight? Or are you still targeting that 10% research number?
Doug Ahrens: Yes. I think the mix is going to be important. It’s incredibly — for our future, we have to be commercially — in a commercially reasonable cadence with our early flights. And while we have, I’d say the long term is 10%. I’ve been very pleased listening to our researchers, both the Italians, Alester Kelly Gerard, have been very powerfully speaking about the benefits of this and the cost benefit of this for research. So I think we’re going to lean into that. One of the things you’re seeing in the revenue per flight we kind of pointed out for Galactic 6 and Galactic 7, it’s meaningfully higher than what we’ve seen in the early flights, and that is leading in — has the 4 seat, of course, leaning in heavily to the research mix also has a place where we’ve had — if seats have become available in the manifest, we are offering those up kind of a market rate.
And that market rate, as I mentioned, has been closer to $1 million on a seat versus our kind of based pricing that we’d had last at 450. And so all those things kind of combined into the mix of a revenue per flight. When we come into deltas, we clearly want to be moving through our existing customers. They’ve been very patient. We also have to use commercially reasonable efforts to make sure we’ve got the revenue coming in to maintain a cash positive and a profitable position. So we’ll work with the mix to balance all that out.
Myles Walton: Got it. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Oliver Chen with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Oliver Chen: Hi Michael and Doug, there’s a lot of very helpful information on the Delta Class contribution margin as well as cost. On the 75% contribution margin, what would you articulate some of the major sensitivities there in terms of upside or downside potential? And then Michael, as you continue to enhance the customer experience, it sounded like there’s a lot of great personalization as well. What are your thoughts in terms of retaining the customers that experience the flight? And any earlier thoughts on customer lifetime value as you think ahead and continue to innovate commercially? Thank you.
Doug Ahrens: Thanks, Oliver. This is Doug. I’ll take the first question. So, regarding the contribution margin, we have a good line of sight into the cost structure because we are already flying, right? We know how much it costs to purchase or build the items that get consumed in the flight. So the cost part of that is something we can see and we’ll continue to drive efficiencies there over time. That has things in it like the rocket motor and the fuel and that sort of things. The more variable item is the revenue per flight. And Michael talked about some of the variation there that can occur depending on the mix of the manifest — and the — we’ve got the standard as ticket pricing or we have some research mixed in there or any other variety.
So, I’d say there’s some upside in that more than downside because when we gave you that 75% that was using a $450,000 per ticket price. So, we’ve indicated today that there’s upside there based on what we’re seeing today and the flights that are coming. So, I’d say more upside than downside in that metric.
Michael Colglazier: And thanks for the notes, Oliver, we have tried to bring forward good information for everyone today. You talked about what we think we’ve been learning from the experience talking about retaining people and then lifetime value and kind of future opportunities. So, I’ll try to hit those. It’s hard to describe how powerful this experience is and the customers — the future astronauts who are now graduating to our astronaut community, they’re just bold over and so happy and so pleased, and it has been a long way has been so worth it. And that experience is going to help in kind of retaining of others as they share that, of course. But as I kind of move into like the value of that group — some of those people, not all, but some of those people will themselves want to repeat.
They want to repeat its Spaceport America or they’ll want to repeat as we move to other Spaceports. The other thing, I think, second, in value is all of their direct friends that are here. So, what we’ve learned in these last six space lights is the event and the moment that is happening around these space flights. So, currently, these are just kind of opened up to the friends and family of our astronauts who are flying and it is happening. It’s emotional, it’s meaningful. It’s fun. There’s — of course, there’s celebration and ceremony that goes with that. And so there’s some, I’ll call it, ancillary revenue opportunity just around that. That probably gets bigger as we open up the Spaceports to more have viewing because it is an event, and we keep hoping to get people out to witness this.
