Virgin Galactic spaceship crashes during test flight in California
FEDERAL accident investigators and Sir Richard Branson are headed to the desert crash site of the Virgin Galactic — a crash which killed one pilot and badly injured another.
FEDERAL accident investigators are headed to a desert crash site where the Vigin Galactic SpaceShipTwo — designed to give wealthy tourists a high-altitude view of Earth — broke up during a test flight, killing one pilot and badly injuring another.
The craft suffered a “serious anomaly” during a test flight, the commercial space flight operator announced on its Twitter feed.
Billionaire Sir Richard Branson, founder of the spaceship, was also going to the crash site saying it was, “among the most difficult trips I have ever had to make” but that he wants to be “with the dedicated and hardworking people who are now in shock at this devastating loss.”
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“Space is hard — but worth it,” Branson wrote. “We will persevere and move forward together.”
California Highway Patrol reported one fatality and one major injury. The Sheriff’s Office in Kern County, California, said that it was the copilot who died, while the pilot ejected and was later transported to hospital, CBS Evening News tweeted.
At a later press conference, a Virgin Galactic spokesperson confirmed that the vehicle was using a new fuel formulation, but stressed that it had been fully tested on the ground.
Aviation experts said it was too early to speculate on what had caused the flight to crash. It was SpaceShipTwo’s 35th flight.
The crash area is about 193 kilometers north of downtown Los Angeles and 32 kilometers from the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the flight originated.
Virgin Galactic Chief Executive George Whitesides said the company’s “primary thoughts are with the crew and their families”.
“Space is hard and today was a tough day,” Mr Whitesides said.
Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled, thanks for all your messages of support. I'm flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team.
— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) October 31, 2014“We are going to be supporting the investigation as we find out what happened today and we are going to get through it.
“Our future rests on hard days like this but we believe we owe it to folks flying this vehicle ... to understand this and move forward, which is what we do,” he said.
“When we have a mishap from the test community, we find the test community is very small ... and we are human, and it hurts,” added Stuart Witt, head of the Mojave Air and Space Port.
The incident is the second disaster involving a US spacecraft this week, after an unmanned Orbital Science rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station exploded after launch on Tuesday.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden offered the agency’s sympathies to the family of the deceased pilot and wishes for a speedy recovery of the other pilot.
“While not a NASA mission, the pain of this tragedy will be felt by all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploration,” Mr Bolden said. “Space flight is incredibly difficult, and we commend the passion of all in the space community who take on risk to push the boundaries of human achievement.”
The craft, which is still in its test phase and which normally carries two pilots, had been carried aloft on Friday on a bigger aircraft known as WhiteKnightTwo and then released for a test of its rocket engine.
“During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo,” Virgin Galactic tweeted. Virgin Galactic said its top concern was the status of the pilots on board.
WhiteKnightTwo had taken off normally from California’s Mojave Desert, and released SpaceShipTwo apparently without incident.
“SpaceShipTwo has been released by WhiteKnightTwo, and is now flying freely,” the firm wrote in a blow-by-blow account of the flight, adding: “Ignition! SpaceShipTwo is flying under rocket power again.”
The next tweet announced the “anomaly.”
US media released images reportedly showing the crash site in the California desert. In the images, plane parts could clearly be seen littering the ground, one with a serial number along its side.
#SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming.
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October 31, 2014NBC reports only one parachute was reportedly sighted over the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the base from which SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane took off.
Photographer Ken Brown, who was covering the test flight, told NBC News that he saw a midflight explosion and later came upon SpaceShipTwo debris scattered across a small area of the desert.
Branson has been closely involved with the development of the spacecraft and, in a case of unfortunate timing, even tweeted a picture today of a boy dressed up as a Virgin Galactic pilot asa suggested Halloween costume.
What are you going to dress up as for Halloween this year? Here's some inspiration: http://t.co/sMQC1aJNQ2 pic.twitter.com/yzeuVNztGB
— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) October 31, 2014More than 500 people, including a number of celebrities, have already reserved seats — and paid a deposit on the $US200,000 ($216,400) ticket price — for the world’s first dedicated commercial space flights on SpaceShipTwo, which can carry six passengers.
Former NASA top space scientist Alan Stern has seats to fly on Virgin Galactic - and its competitor XCOR aerospace. He isn’t rethinking plans to fly in space at all.
“Let’s not be Chicken Littles here,” said Stern, now a vice president at Southwest Research Institute. “The birth of aviation was also a very dangerous time period.”
“All forms of transportation carry risk,” he said. “To expect spaceflight could somehow be different is unrealistic on the part of the public or anyone. Secondly to do something very hard, to do something on the frontier, comes with risk.”
Former NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger, who nearly died in a 1997 fire aboard the Russian space station Mir, said that when he first met British billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, he told him the first thing he’d have to worry about is liability insurance.
“You will have setbacks,” Linenger said he told Branson. “That is a reality.”
The National Space Society said it stands by Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides and encouraged the company to press on.
“We expect that the cause of the accident will be found and fixed so that the Virgin Galactic dream of ‘opening space to tens of thousands of people’ can become a reality,” said Mark Hopkins, chairman of the NSS Executive Committee.
Ken Baxter, 65, of Las Vegas, said he was one of those who signed up to make the first flight early next year. He’s confident the flight will happen at some point.
“No question about it,” he said. “Richard’s not a giver-upper and neither am I.”
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