Welcome to Texas ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Brought to you by Facebook, I'm Dan from Mac. On today's show, the Jeffrey Epstein fallout and the deal not being made this week in Sun Valley.

But first, public space.

So earlier this morning, Virgin Galactic announced it will become the first commercial

space company to go public.

Or even more specifically, it will be the first commercial space tourism company to go

public, as Virgin Galactic isn't really about partnering with NASA to launch satellites

or send astronauts to the moon.

It wants to rocket ordinary people, albeit very rich ordinary people, into orbit.

So this is the decade-old brainchild of Richard Branson, the British billionaire who has a habit of spinning office companies,

and it already has hundreds of customers who have put down a combined $80 million

in ticket deposits. The deal itself is nearly as complicated as space travel, as this won't be a

garden variety IPO. Instead, Virgin Galactic plans to go public via something called a reverse

merger, and I know your eyes are probably glazing over, but hear me out here. Basically,

it gets bought by an already

public company called Social Capital Hedosofia, except Social Capital Hedosofia isn't really a company,

at least how people normally consider a company. It's something called a special purpose or

blank check acquisition vehicle, which went public over a year ago with the sole purpose of

buying another company. In other words,

it doesn't have a product. Its product is the company it buys. Now, if this thing hadn't struck a deal

with Virgin Galactic or another company after a few years, social capital head of Sophia would have

just wound down and returned its money to shareholders. So this blank check company, this social

...