Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Virgin Orbit Develops Ventilator For Pandemic Response

Long Beach-based space launch company Virgin Orbit has temporarily shifted its attention from developing rockets and its satellite launch systems, and applied its engineering skills to developing a new ventilator, designed to help in the battle against the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. According to Virgin Orbit, it has developed a new, new mass-producible bridge ventilator, working with the Bridge Ventilator Consortium (BVC), led by the University of California Irvine (UCI) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), which it will begin producing in its Long Beach manufacturing facility in early April. According to Virgin Orbit, it aims to have a functioning, deployable bridge ventilator in production in early April, and hopes to also work with other manufacturers as soon as the new devices is reproducible and production ready.