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Explosion at Scaled Composites Kills 2, Injures 4
Animats writes "Details are scant at this time, but a explosion at the Scaled Composites rocket test facility has killed two people and seriously injured four more. The Los Angeles Times reports that the explosion was 'ignited by a tank of nitrous oxide.' This is Burt Rutan's facility, and the home of SpaceShip One and Virgin Galactic spacecraft development."
then we got NASA people sabotaging computer parts, and astronaughts getting piss drunk before they go to space.. Whats next for space news? a new discovery? or more paris hilton type shit?
Here in Dallas, we just had a massive gas explosion yesterday at an propane/acetylene company.
Condolences to their families and loved ones...
an asteroid with botox treatment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
CNN is also reporting on this story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/26/spaceport.blast/i ndex.html
My prayers are with the lost and their loved ones. What a shame. There are two gone, but 4 are still with us, though in really bad shape. So... send your prayers, positive vibes, your "mojo", or your voodoo. It doesn't matter now. These people are working hard to help push our knowledge as humans further. So we should stand by them and do what little we can.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
The article's a little light on details, but explosive failure is pretty rare for hybrid rocket motors such as this, isn't it?
Usually mis-ignition will just cause rapid release of the N2O oxidizer, and designs are such that a clogged nozzle which would actually cause an explosion generally causes a safety valve to open and vent the excess pressure.
Yeah, everything I've seen on hybrid motors says they are non-explosive with a near zero TNT rating.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Dallas explosion injures 3, snarls traffic
(Sorry about the link, Dallas News is just WAY to heavy in adds)
Saw that one when working. Gezz, you could see those Acetylene canisters fly. People stopped, ran from their cars just amazing. All started with a faulting line filling the smaller tanks too.
I've been chasing news articles for a little while now.
Details are very scarce, but apparently this was a cold-flow test -- they weren't intending to light the motor, just flow nitrous through it. Tank ruptured, and a big fireball. Evidence visible from pictures etc suggests nothing detonated. Apparently people a couple miles away at the airport proper didn't hear an explosion -- they just saw clouds of dust and smoke, not abnormal for a motor test. I haven't seen anything about causes etc.
My condolences to the families.
All I have to say on the matter is that rocket science is dangerous business, the same goes for any kind of challenging engineering. Sometimes people die because other people fuck up, sometimes people die in spite of every sane precaution that could possibly be taken. I just hope this is the latter and not the former. I just hope it isn't symptomatic of a corporate mentality takeover after the buyout.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"Where's the kaboom?.. There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom" It was earth-shattering for their families, earth-shattering for the injured. For the dead, they're not feeling anything.
Man, I can usually appreciate sympathetic dark humor but that joke just comes across as so dickish and it isn't even funny in an inappropriate "NASA=need another seven astronauts" kind of way.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
From the image, it looks like a truckbed fell over during the course of unloading something (presumably a tank of nox). A forklift is still upright, so the explosion couldn't have been huge, deathly though it was. Hopefully this is just a relatively minor accident at a relatively popular company.
Besides the obvious tragedy of human loss, I hope this doesn't also sway them from continuing. With NASA spending money on colonizing the moon, guys like this may be our only chance for the future of interesting and pioneering science.
Yes, because there's never been any deaths due to carelessness at NASA.
"The Los Angeles Times reports that the explosion was 'ignited by a tank of nitrous oxide.' This is the home of SpaceShip One and Virgin Galactic spacecraft development."
James Bond was seen running from the facility.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Seriously - long waits on the launch pad led to astronauts in diapers.
*cough* apollo 1 *cough*
NASA has NOTHING to do with this project. This is most likely scaled composite's facility (though details are missing). In fact, it is possible that 1 of the 2 was burt rutan. If he dies, then Scaled will fold up in the same fashion that cray research did. Rutan IS Scaled.
My condolences to the families.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That was sarcasm! You can't think of the shuttle program without thinking of columbia. Obviously he was referring to that!
Crap!
Different people take humour in different ways. I like the NASA one, hadn't heard that before. Seriously though, you are saying earth shattering for injured and families.. Oh no. 6 or 7 people hurt/killed. How many are murdered each day in America? How many murdered killed, die of famine each day, killed in Iraq from bombs, blown up by landmines, crushed to death? Really, i'm sick of the double standards we humans have. Certainly condolences to the families, but I'll be damned if I'm going to make these deaths any more or less special than any other.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
I work with munitions both guided and unguided with the AF, General Purpose Bombs and Guided Missiles, More then likely just complacentcy was the factor, hardly ever is there an accident with explosives that takes place that doesn't involve that factor. This day and age explosives are not as fragile as Nitro once was, it takes a hell of alot to set them off. Even with the solid rocket motors of the missiles the tech data states that a spark of static electricity could set them off however after working with them long enough you learn to respect the potential there but also know what you can and can not do with them. But in the end they will find a scapegoat and blame it on someone or a group of people to help keep the heat off themselves.
Vampires Vs. Werewolves
You know this wasn't at NASA, right? I blame Bush for everything too, but this one might actually not be his fault.
...Scaled Composites isn't a government contractor.
Well, no, but it was just acquired by one.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Burt Rutan is not one of the casualties. He's spoken to the press since the accident. All six casualties were Scaled Composites employees.
I thought enraged jealousy led to astronauts in diapers.
A moment of silence for these lost explorers, and deepest hopes that the survivors of this accident recover to see space!
The Scaled Composites website says they are "NOW HIRING!"
http://www.scaled.com/
If someone willingly chooses a risky career, what business is it of yours to say it's not worth it? By that logic, we should all be living by the Amish, because driving to work, particpating in practically any sport, and even crossing the street all entail risk. If your logic is implemented I hope that football is banned because it is a high-risk sport, and the people who participate in football should have that choice eliminated.
If people who worked in aerospace were forced to choose that profession I might agree with you, but they didn't; they chose to work there and knew the risks. Besides, this incident was likely a freak accident that could more easily happen at any hardware store where some under-trained careless employee is refilling a LPG or LNG tank.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The entymology I am more familiar with, and would seem more believable, is rooted in the Fench revolution. The French peasants trampled the landlords' crops by stamping on them with their sabots. Much more believable!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If anything, I would say this is a sign of progress (although, the loss of life is terrible). When you're at the edge of the frontier and pushing forward, lives will be lost. For historical significance, please reference the last 6000 years of civilization.
Sure it's tragic and all, but honestly.. stuff exploding on the ground is like a rite of passage for the space race.
First thing into my head on seeing the headline was "Is Burt okay??".
Marvin's Kaboom quote was the second though, I'll admit.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"The Los Angeles Times reports that the explosion was 'ignited by a tank of nitrous oxide.'" Just goes to show that nitrous oxide is no laughing matter.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
How many are murdered each day in America? How many murdered killed, die of famine each day
This is a non-convincing argument. Pro-war people say the same thing "Oh how many people get murdered each year?" Rapists say "at least I didnt kill anyone." Murders say "at least I'm not a pedophile." This is moral relativism and a slippery slope. If you cant defend private enterprise launching millionares into space as something to die for then that should tell you about how weak your position is.
Well, first of all this rocket business is just that: a business. Its someones fucking job and they got killed at the workplace. You CAN prevent that. You CANT prevent sensless street murder. You CANT stop famine and overpopulation. People should expect a safe work environment. At the end of the day these people died so Burt can launch millionaires into near orbit for 250k a pop. Not exactly a noble calling.
Now, I fully expect the government to come in and regulate these guys. At least put in some real NASA-level safety precautions. NASA isnt perfect but their safety record and procedures are pretty good. I think this is the beginning of the end for the "wild west" approach to space exploration. Now the responsible adults need to step in and protect the worker and protect the customers. We've seen a milliom times in america. From little children working at the looms losing fingers to men losing their hands in meat packing. Some new industry comes up and safety is the last concern. No more, thanks.
My condolences to the families.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Context is everything...
Why does the needless death of a beautiful baby in a war torn nation touch us or tug harder at our heart strings than the equally tragic death of an old man in a traffic accident? Part of it is the loss of possibility, a life unfulfilled. Part of it is the sadness of losing something innocent to something so depraved and heartless as a snipers rifle or terrorists bomb.
In the same way, we are especially touched by the loss of heroes. Heroes of the mind who force back the darkness, heroes of the will who challenge what's possible for people, and heroes of the heart who throw themselves fiercely at life's dare. Along the way we lose some of these heroes and a little piece of us dies with them, and that's why we mourn, that's why their passing is something special.
It doesn't diminish the humanity or worth of others, it doesn't diminish the depth or breadth of the trajedy of losing others. It is however a special loss, and these men and women deserve our acknowlegement, our respect, and our tears at their passing. It will always be hardest when we lose that which is the best of ourselves.
Who we make heroes... and how we mourn there passing more than anything else says something about who we are.
A rabbit stole my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, you insensitive clod!
The increased U.S. efficiency in handling goods is not worth the price in human lives.
While corporations are profiting from increased handling capacity, our brave young men and women are dying unnecessarily.
Ban forklifts!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Exploring space is dangerous. Getting there uses lots dangerous fuels, and once there, it's not that hospitable of a place for the human body. We live in fantastic times. People in their 20s and 30s will live longer then any earlier humans. There is much less danger on a daily basis then in any other time in human history. Space is dangerous. Getting there is dangerous. You can mitigate the risk as much as possible. At the end of the day, there's still a hell of a lot of risk.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
I don't understand what your point is with the first two paragraphs but i agree wholeheartedly with your third.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
The US occupation of highways, industrial workplaces, Iraq, beaches, hell even five-star resorts is higher priced in terms of human lives than the US occupation of space. 10 out of 10 for sensationalism, but more people are killed each year by bees than by the space program.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Please create an obituary section, and place death-related articles in it.
Certainly condolences to the families, but I'll be damned if I'm going to make these deaths any more or less special than any other.
That sounds heartless and cruel, but it would be the best thing for the company and everyone else who works there. This is an industrial accident. It's terrible and deserves an investigation like any other. People are not supposed to die at work and all safeguards should be in place. Anything else is taking chances with other people's lives for money, the moral equivalent of murder. At the same time, society should not blow it out of proportion. Immoral people take advantage of that kind of emotional response to pass laws to their advantage. It already takes billions of dollars to break into the space business, an accident like this can be used to make even that impossible. This accident strikes most of us because these people are the lucky few who are living a science fiction fantasy. Keeping a cool head is the best way to make sure there's more of this work to go around.
Awww, who am I kidding? Scaled Composites is bought. The parent company is going to fire them all anyway.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Those people were professionals. They knew what they were doing and they knew the risks. That's not to be cold hearted, but the opposite. They did their jobs despite the risks and suffered for it. That's the price of pioneering. They're not heroes for suffering, they were heroes before, for living and working on the edge. Heroes will replace them. Some of those will get hurt, and so on.
The first thing that occurred to me was whether Rutan was there. He wasn't, but he could have been. It's his way to keep his hands in things. That would have been an enormous loss to aero- and space development. He's one of the all time geniuses of all things flyable. Any really good aerospace engineer could write a definitive book on composite construction. It took genius to do so in 28 pages. It'd be damn hard for Scaled to go on without him, even with Northrup buying them out.
The second that occurred to me was that it'll put a damper on hybrid motor development and use. The motors are much safer than solid or liquid, but the handling equipment isn't safe by any stretch. Amateur rocketry has been using them for years, but nobody is willing to break the high-power certification barrier and make them available to low and mid-power rockters due to the liability factor from the ground equipment. It may come to nothing more than headlines for the media and PR for some politicians, but I expect a call for the FAA's Office of Space Transportation to rethink certifying of hybrid powered human rated craft.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
'nuff said
Plus ca changes, plus c'est les meme choses.
And people die each week so you have the convenience of buying a pepsi at 3:00am.
The grandparents point is simply that a death is a death, although when their is something unique or spectacular about it we make it a bigger deal than if it's simply a "routine" death. Now I don't mean routine to the family, but routine in a page 26 kind of way, as opposed to something that makes the front few pages.
And I would expect that sending someone to orbit is a very noble calling to many. How many non-goverment employees have ever sent someone to orbit? I'm guessing not very many.
Pretty quick of you to assume that safety wasn't a concern. It was actually a cold test run when it happened. There were bunkers onsite to ensure safety. That's just the from the story we know now. When it's been determined that safety wasn't a high priority then I'll be on your side but for now you are just assuming....
There's a big difference between accepting death as a natural result of an activity, and measuring the progress of that activity in terms of death. When one goes to war, one expects to lose soldiers. That doesn't mean that whoever lost the most soldiers has necessarily won.
Hindsight is 20/20. From this initial report, it sounds like this particular incident was a result of known factors, and thus avoidable. The Challenger and Columbia incidents were the result of factors which, while known, were under-appreciated. The Challenger factors were managerial, while the Columbia factors were the result of engineering.
There's also the matter of economics. It's simply not economically possible to guard against every threat. If it were, then someone on this planet would be nigh-immortal.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
is it funnier with or without the typo? It's past my bedtime.
Seems like an honorable way to go. Condolences to all involved.
Plus ca changes, plus c'est les meme choses.
Get off your high horse. Moral relativism, my ass.
And I'm someone who's first action on reading the headlines (before slashdot even noticed them) was to call a friend who has been closely involved with the x-prize and scaled composites to make sure she wasn't one of the ones hurt.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You can't prevent a class of incidents from occurring. You can make them rare, compared to previous statistics, but you can't prevent them outright. And at some point, you have to realize that there is a balance between risk and reward, and that human nature is to always treat the current level of risk as unacceptable.
I wish more people would realize that.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Double standards, yes, but you have to understand that they are an inherent part of human existence. You make a poignant statement, but I don't see how anyone can claim complete objectivity. Yes, your are right about the fact that these contradictions do exist, I cannot believe your contempt towards the simple acts of honoring the dead. Everybody has the right to be honored in death, every survivor has the right to comfort. The murdered, starved, bombed, and everyone else who died deserve this. If your view of fairness is that every death is the same, so be it. But to feel contempt toward those who feel that those dead should be honored is wrong.
Maybe your logic and observations are true, but your contempt for those who would only wish to grieve is inexcusable. So what if they wish to honor those who died more than the next person? So what if they even were to erect statues of them that they didn't deserve? I see no crime in that. And even if the honor we give to their memory is unequal to that we give to others, that does not make it wrong to grieve. Fair, maybe not. But I too give my condolences to all those involved, and unashamedly at that.
Maybe if this sig is witty or clever enough, someone will love me...
"Really, i'm sick of the double standards we humans have. "
So... if your father died, would you just shrug and say "Welp, just another death today?"
I already know what the answer to that is. It's related to the reason why these deaths are important. When you feel personally involved (i.e. people working to further advance our journies into space), you care more. It's not a matter of double-standards. When somebody dies, invariably your thoughts drift towards how that will affect you. It's just the way the mind works.
You could get all Vulcan about it and try to brush it off with rationale like you just used, but sooner or later, somebody will die, and your reaction will violate your rationale. Humans aren't as illogical as you're making them out to be. It's not worth getting 'sick' over.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Chuck you, Farley.
At the end of the day, these people died so Burt could launch millionaires (instead of billionaires) into near orbit for $250K a pop (instead of $30M a pop).
Given the situation in Unistat, and the likelihood of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (TANSTAAFL is something Heinlein derived as a likely result of living in a hostile environment) coming true after a critical mass of humans is achieved outside of earth orbit, I'm willing to bet that the people working at Scaled Composites were on their way towards doing more for human freedom than NASA did in the past 40 years.
Until NOC bought them out, of course, ending all hope of cheap civilian access to space.
> Now, I fully expect the government to come in and regulate these guys. At least put in some real NASA-level safety precautions.
Chuck you again, and the horse you rode in on, Farley.
Columbus and those who followed him didn't cross the Atlantic because they thought it was safe. They did so because he thought he could make a fuckload of money by doing so.
NASA safety precautions are appropriate for people who will sue you if your spaceship blows up.
The meek (and that's you, Farley) can have the earth. The rest of us only want the right to sign a waiver that we may take our chances with the stars.
High-pressure gas cylinders are to be respected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_cylinder
Dude, you post way to much on the boards. I post maybe once a week, but you are always there. You're a god damn karma whore. Read the fuckin' article next time.
Don't stop.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
This is very sad, but not unexpected. Every major construction project will have an estimated number deaths associated with it before it starts. Every skyscraper, every bridge, every tunnel, every road through bad terrain, and yes, every space mission.
Most people (other than the safety engineers and insurance folks) rarely stop and think about what it costs in human lives to move forward. But there is a cost.
In a perfect world it would never happen, but we are imperfect and it will always happen. People make mistakes. Equipment malfunctions. Bad weather. Mislabeled products. Acts of nature.
The people that do this work benefit their species; a true higher calling. Take a moment to think about their sacrifice and thank them.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
They were testing one of the fuel tanks.
It was an explosion, the cause isn't known yet but the majority of the injuries were shrapnel related.
I found a couple of pictures of the tank that exploded, or one very much like it. The tank and the trailer it is on appear very similar to the blasted one in today's news pics. I found this at http://www.desertturtle.com/SpaceShipOne-Flights.h tml. You have to scroll down to the 9th and 10th thumbnails and click on them.
Notice the sign on the tank says, "NONFLAMMABLE GAS, OXIDIZER".
Right now it says, prominently, "Scaled Composites is NOW HIRING!"... If you know about this tragedy you might interpret that banner ad the wrong way. Just pointing out they might want to update their website to say, our hearts go out to the loved ones.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
SpaceX was more likely to succeed anyway.
No offense to the thunderbirds o any other acro team, but what they do is not progress, or advancing technology.
Sport? Sure. Art? Maybe. Pushing the boundaries? No way!
If all that necessary to get there is training, then you're not pushing the boundaries of anything. By definition, you're "just" doing it right.
Now if they invented a new figure, it would be, but when's the last time that happened?
I'm using the term in a metaphorical sense, not a literal one. If we're preparing a mission to Mars to deploy from an orbiting fueling station around Earth, and a fueling goes bad, it would be the same situation.
I disagree. A zombie army will come in handy when fighting patent battles. Lawyers can't suck the lifeblood from a zombie, because it doesn't have any.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
SUBSTANCE IDENTIFICATION
o xide/recognition.html
* Formula
N(2)O
* Structure
(For Structure, see paper copy)
* Synonyms
Dinitrogen monoxide, factitious air, hyponitrous acid anhydride, laughing gas, nitrogen oxide
* Identifiers
1. CAS No.: 10024-97-2
2. RTECS No.: QX1350000
3. DOT UN: 1070 14 (compressed); 2201 23 (refrigerated liquid)
4. DOT label: Nonflammable gas, oxidizer (nitrous oxide, compressed); nonflammable gas (nitrous oxide, refrigerated liquid)
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/nitrous
If this is were NASA, they would ground the shuttle for two years as Congress and a bunch of jackass administrators poured over every detail in the name of safety. But, this is the private sector, and they will say that playing with explosives sometimes get you killed, and order the people back to work within the next day or so. By the time even NASA were to appoint a committee to form committees, the company will have cleaned the place and started building again.
Look, this sort of thing happens every day in the private sector. Fisherman drown, taxi drivers get shot, construction workers die in falls, and life goes on, with hardly missing a beat. If you want space to be really privatized, the right way to look at this whole accident is to say, yeah, it sucks that they died, but, back to work people.
This is my sig.
They're pretty well-regulated already today, you want more regulation?
If you want to shoot off anything bigger than a bottle rocket these days, you can bet your anatomy that you'll be hip-deep in Feds and the weight of the paperwork will exceed the weight of the bird. After all, they don't want anybody other than government contractors building WMDs, now, do they? Even indulging in high-powered rocketry on an amatuer basis takes a license. They don't just put them in Cracker Jack boxes. You need to be TRA AND NAR Level One certified to light off a big one. And bonded. Don't show up for your certification run with a six-pack of anything other than soda, they'll never even let you set up.
As far as man-rated vehicles go, you couldn't afford the paperwork for them on an amatuer basis. And that's just to build one. To launch it is a whole 'nuther set of paperwork. "Wild wild West" approach to space exploration? Only in Hollyweird.
Here's what the FAA says about model rockets: http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ec fr&sid=a327e61307f208ad26c413bc89920ba6&rgn=div5&v iew=text&node=14:2.0.1.3.15&idno=14#14:2.0.1.3.15. 3. Finding the sections on man-rated rockets is left as an exercise for the curious, as those who just want to shrug off private-sector space travel as 'unlicensed and unregulated, send in the Feds' won't bother to look, they'll just post here demanding 'Something Be Done'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Some of the articles say that one Glenn May was killed. I wonder if this was him? http://bikerodnkustom3.homestead.com/danger.html
The importance of a death is proportional to your relation to it. It's not an absolute, it depends on who you ask, and there are no right answers.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
This news combined with the NASA sabotage event may be correlated. Is someone trying to make US space activities look bad?
Or does anyone else find it suspicious that this happened less than two weeks after Northrop Grumman bought them out?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
"(i.e. people working to further advance our journies into space)"
For the Nth time (where N approaches infinity), as gets mentioned several times every time an article about Scaled comes up, they were doing no such thing. They're working on a pricey joyride which does very little to advance the state of the art of spaceflight, whose operating envelope is more akin to a supersonic aircraft than that of a spacecraft, which gets to skip out on all of the *real* challenges of spaceflight (ISP to mass ratios, thermal protection, etc) and take the much, much easier routes. It'd be like me claiming that I'm advancing the state of the art on ocean crossing because I built a powered dinghy that can only survive 5' waves but has a really neat wiring system.
This all doesn't make any of these people's deaths less tragic (and my heart goes out to their families), but let's not use their deaths as a chance to portray them as some sort of heroic visionaries leading the way into the future. They were working on a job and died in an industrial accident.
If anything, perhaps this accident will put lie to the concept that hybrid rockets are somehow inherently safe.
Present day. Present time.
Mod parent up.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Burt Rutan has just sold the company to Grumman. Is it possible that he didn't like the way things were going and bailed?
2 1/2114226&from=rss
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/
Also, three more people gained super powers.
The Airforce Thunderbirds pilots should never be at the edge or pushing any boundaries - they are airshow display pilots with specific artificial boundaries that protect the crowds, and they are nowhere near the performance envelopes of the aircraft.
2 & 4 != 3 & 3
Was anyone smoker?
No smoker! => no explosion!
Rocket != car's motor
Security of the rocket != security of car's motor
Or was not there security in the rocket test facility?
The motivation, I am not yet informed about for reasonable speculation.
Branson is involved as a partner, and has, himself been talking about the sale of Virgin holdings to The Carlyle Group.
Three feet deep, and rising...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why? Because:
1) It's highlighted for special attention.
Photos help a lot. Background story so that you know more about the person or even the animal who died help too.
Most people won't think about the millions of pigs being slaughtered to produce food, but they'd care about some little pig if it's highlighted in the media.
2) You have only just so much "bandwidth" for sadness.
One baby dies, you feel sad. One thousand babies die, you don't feel 1000 times sadder.
Lots of people die every day who shouldn't die. But fact is, it's not very helpful to go about constantly crying over that.
Be sad sure. Try and help fix it if possible = even better.
3) Everyone has favourites, we have to have favourites, being finite in this finite world. Seems even God has favourites.
I hear in some farms there are animals that are pets, and animals that are going to be food/"produce". But it's not like Daisy the cow was really different from cow #15534.
Anyway, it's no help saying "accidents will happen" or, as you have it, 'space is dangerous'. This is surely a very difficult time for Scaled Composites and I give them my prayers and condolences.
FTA "Gary May also cited the excitement of working for a company whose projects were financed by famous entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft."
Let me suggest a musical offering: "GREED KILLING" by Napalm Death =)
With all due respect to the parents, the cynic in me says this is exactly how their lawyers want the jury to feel. Abandon all common sense and award the parents $100 million for their suffering, of which the lawyer will get $30 million, not that it will help the dead girl in any way. The parents will never have to work again for the rest of their lives and can focus all of their attention grieving for their daughter, until they die from idleness and rich food. And the bad, bad auto makers will be punished. Never mind the drunk who was the true cause of the accident, since he has no money. In the meantime, the rest of us will pay for it with higher auto sticker prices.
Not only that -- when the leader of the Thunderbirds was on the Daily Show, he said something I found kind of surprising. He's been the leader now for (I think) 3 years or so, and he has not changed the routine from what it was before he was there. They most definitely do not push boundaries of any kind; they perform a very calculated show to wow people, kind of like circus acrobats. Is it dangerous? sure. Pushing the limits? Not so much.
gameDB
Nonsense!! They are AMERICAN HEROS!! They are THE BEST IN THE WORLD!!
Anyone who doesn't think so is a PINKO COMMIE!!!!!
So they must be pushing boundaries all the time, mustn't they??
P.S. - if you want a lesson in how to push boundaries safely, look up Ron Ayres work on Thrust SSC.
According to the article, two were killed on-site, and a further died in hospital, post-surgery.
I tend to think these guys are heroes -- much more so, as people trying to innovate and expand our potential, than, say, those who go to iraq to fight other human beings, and find themselves strangely fought back against in the process. However, the article also says that Scaled Composites undertakes projects for the military, which muddies their heroism somewhat.
Three people dead, others injured, out of a small team. A proper test (testFLIGHT?) was due in a few days. Seems to me that this will definitely set things back, even if they don't take time to grieve, which I'm sure they will.
What I'd love to know is... what are the other competing projects right now, and how ruthless are they?
"..(Columbus) did so because he thought he could make a fuckload of money by doing so..."
Um, Yes! That's the most accurate view of American history I've ever heard from an American. It's so right, it hurts.
Just for the record, most immigrants don't come to the US because they 'yearn to breath free' either. They come because they can make a fuckload of money.
What that produces is an entrepreneurial spirit, all right. But it also produces crushing inhumanity. Columbus's attitude to the American natives of his day was that some would make 'good slaves'. And now we see the results of this selection process in America's dealings with the rest of the world.
No libertarian would ever suggest anything being a government job beyond preserving individual freedoms and rights, beyond that govenment has no place.
No one forced them to take those jobs, why does the government need to once more be involved in the affairs of private citizens?
Both the Challenger and Columbia disasters had plenty of blame to cover both management and engineering.
As Feynman demonstrated in the hearings over Challenger, the o-rings were not designed for use at the ambient temperature at launch time. That could have been known, and the launch stopped, if there had not been a stacking up of mistakes by NASA managers and engineers as well as those same groups at Morton Thoikol. All of those people spent time looking at what amounted to a handful of Powerpoint slides but none of them saw the relationship between temperature and rocket motor problems.
Same thing with Columbia. Steps were taken to keep insulation from falling off, it was a known problem. They even had reasonable video of the actual piece that did the damage, doing the damage. While the thing was up in space they knew the steps the Lockheed engineers took didn't work. That problem was again compounded by the poor use of what information they had to determine what they should do in response.
I'm picking nits here, but it illustrates the complexity of doing something like this. A whole bunch of intelligent people at NASA and Lockheed and Morton had a whole bunch of information to work with but they couldn't (or wouldn't) makes sense of it.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Other agencies will replace "NASA" and investigate this tragedy. This is dangerous work.
In respect to those who lost their lives, I'm going to watch The Right Stuff this weekend along with the SpaceShipOne DVD from The Discovery Channel.
I said "dark libertarian", implying someone working at odds with the typical libertarian credo. They also wear black and get a cool red lightsaber.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I haven't done much flying but one of the primary safety rules constantly repeated is "don't go dicking around close to the ground." Altitude gives you options. Another important rule is to keep proper separation from other aircraft. That distance should properly be measured in miles, not feet.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I see that some people don't know much about Burt Rutan and his goals and how he hopes to accomplish them. This talk should clear that up. If you think a government space program has any chance of accomplishing anything, then you should watch this video and get a bit wiser.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/4
This accident is a miserable development. Rutan is working very hard to provide us with that slice of 'west' the world hasn't had since California was settled. I hope this doesn't set back that dream.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
There's plenty of dangerous industries in the USA. Consider, for example, all the natural gas pipelines. There's investigations when accidents take place, but it doesn't stop a company from delivering energy. Or, look at electricity. I'll say that any lineman has cahoneys as big any guy working on a spaceship. The lineman has a thousand people bitching at him to get the lights on when he's working thousands of volts in the rain. I think that often times we get so caught up in the glamor of the new that we forget the lives people lay on the line every day to bring us the electricity, gas, and food that we take for granted.
This is my sig.
Founder Burt Sugarman, and a wolfman according to reports, among the dead. The target, Rapcrap, still alive.
If nothing else they're showing that a market exists for space flight at that price point, which is important in itself to attract investment in the harder problems of going into space.
Given this incident occurred during a oxidizer flow rate test I am left wondering if particle impingement somewhere in the NO2 system may have been the culprit.
I blend a great deal of "exotic" breathing gases used for technical scuba operations and one of my primary concerns is having O2 "clean" equipment. The goal is to avoid any particles of material (dust, lubricant, etc) in the valves, lines, regulators, and cylinders that may be forced through very tiny orifices at high speed. The resulting friction inside a high pressure line, valve, or regulator can be enough to cause ignition of the particle. Of course, in the presence of an oxidizer, even a tiny bit of ignited material can cause other components in the system to fail. Valves and regulators are made of brass and have internal components made of nylon and rubber. The resulting cascade of failures can be quite devastating, especially if the pressure vessel is compromised.
Just a thought...
Update in Washington Post. One of the critically injured people died after surgery.
No comment.
too fishy
Read radical news here
He gave nearly the same presentation at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference two years ago now. It was a good talk, over all. However, he is a bit of a dreamer. I'm not saying that is completely a bad thing. But if you believe for one second that SpaceShipOne can be scaled up to an orbital vehicle - something he implied in his presentation - I have oceanfront property in Arizona you might be interested in. Nice bridge, too ...
... Government funded space programs have sent probes from the sun, to past Pluto, to Mars, landed men on the moon, hosted men and women in earth orbit. What has Burt Rutan done again? Two suborbital space shots? I think NASA did that back in the 50's...
(I'm an aerospace engineer. I also used to work for the Army designing missiles, I now work for NASA designing Ares. You might think I'm biased, but I do know people working in alt.space. I wish them all the best, and from my discussions with some of them, they know what their position is in history. What they are doing has been done before, their goal is to lower the cost of entry and raise the flight count per year. Achieving that will be a great success and open up space to the masses...)
He is right that the little guys have their chance at space - look at Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR, Masten Space Systems, etc. They are all realizing the dream, watching their budgets and doing their best to lower the cost of entry to space. And if they do, that will be something unique.
A third and tangential point - NASA and the alternative space community have differing goals; so the 'If you think a government space program has any chance of accomplishing anything' really doesn't make much sense. 'Burt Rutan and his goals and how he hopes to accomplish them'
All I have to say on the matter is that rocket science is dangerous business, the same goes for any kind of challenging engineering.
Agreed. There will be loss of life. However, if the accident occurred as I've heard it (the result of a cold flow through an igniter test), then these deaths are particularly sad. All they were doing was running laughing gas through an injector. There was no need for people to be exposed during the test. They should have been in a bunker. I just hope this wasn't a case of complacency. That's not what alt.space needs right now.
Indeed, these people were no more special, or less special, than many others killed every day. The difference is that these people died doing something generally considered "not dangerous", so the deaths are more unexpected.
Still, I don't make jokes about individual soldiers in Iraq dying, I don't make jokes even about individual gang members dying. Making jokes about individual deaths is insensitivity in the extreme; even when shielded behind anonymous internet monikers. If you want to make jokes in general about death, or even about 'anonymous' deaths, that's one thing. But to take light the lives of the recently deceased is the height of cruelty. I do know one Scaled employee who I don't even need to worry was there, I know he's working on a different project, but I also know he reads Slashdot. I'm sure close friends or relatives of one or more of the deceased do as well.
I don't ask for any specific death to be treated more specially, just equally humanely.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
In Soviet Russia, whippet whips YOU!
According to the BBC, a third person has died. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6918540. stm
Shit, if that was the case, the we'd have to say that it was actually the Russians that won the space-race. =D
And now they say a third person has died.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Of course people remember the old newsreel clips of rockets exploding on the launchpad, and test beds blowing up. We think they're funny and quaint. But the people who actually worked on those designs, and who learned from those failures learned a great deal that made it into NASA's procedures but never made it into the textbooks. Most have died of old age. Many of the new generation of enterpreneurial engineers think NASA if full of scared old women, no "real men" with the right stuff any more. Until those engineers accidentally kill somebody with their ignorance.
I think that this is just the first of a series of deadly lessons that the new space engineers are going to have to relearn before they succeed, and one of the lessons will probably be why safe space travel is so expensive.
When is it going to fly now. 2011? 2015?
It's been 3 years since the last private space flight.
... I mean its not exactly rocket science
If anyone of you here wants to express your condolences in a way which reaches the co-workers of the victims, you can use the contact form on. Even a small supportive word from a total stranger can really make wonders. Just remember to select the "Fan letters and well wishes for the SpaceShipOne program" radio button, that makes sure your message will be delivered to the right persons.
I guess the big nitrous tank has ruptured, the fire was a secondary and happened after the tank failure. Stuff burns in nitrous oxide quite nicely, like in oxygen. I don't believe nitrous oxide has explosive properties (unless it is mixed with some flammable material). This would be consistent with the shrapnel injuries and burns of the victims. Also, if any explosive substance in a hundred kilo quantity had truly detonated, there would be nothing left of the trailer, there would be only a hole in the ground.
Nitrous oxide tank has to be able to handle pressures about as high as tanks for acetylene welding gas (much higher than in the common household propane tanks). Building the Space Two nitrous tank must be quite a challenge - I think they are using composite materials to keep it reasonably light. During compression and release, there are high temperature fluctuation inside the tank (like in the fridge freon compressor) and it is possible that cold/heat shocked composite wall of the tank cracked under the pressure.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
..that this took place soon after the announcement that Northrop Grumman was taking full control of Scaled Composites? I may be wrong, I may be paranoid and its just a big coincidence, I may be right on also. Just seems odd to me.
2 1/2114226&from=rss
Article on buyout http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/
I am sorry to hear people were hurt, I hate seeing news items like this. I hope that everyone that lived is ok and that it turns out the problem was a mechanical failure or something simular as opposed to neglegence or sabatoge.
Actually, most Libertariens in the US just want to see us actually start following the constitution.
I'm a left-leaning Libertarian. I believe that our society should feed, educate, and provide medical care to those who are less fortunate than myself -- but I'd be happier if I could give my money to a number of competing charities rather than have it appropriated by the government. But, what I really want is for our leaders to read the constitution, return habeus corpus, close the secret switch-rooms, stop regulating who I can marry, disallow government-bodies from taking my home so that they can build shopping malls, and so forth.
Historically, Libertarians tended to lean Republican -- but the bushie's blatant disregard for the constitution has pretty-much changed this.
Enough politics! Let's get back to discussing these brave, independent, and free pioneers who suffered a tragic loss -- but who, we hope, will go on and do even greater things. I'd love to work there, even after this tragedy.
But what these people are doing is important, if I had skills they needed I would be happy to work there, risk and all.
At the end of the day, these people died so Burt could launch millionaires (instead of billionaires) into near orbit for $250K a pop (instead of $30M a pop).
Given the situation in Unistat, and the likelihood of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (TANSTAAFL is something Heinlein derived as a likely result of living in a hostile environment) coming true after a critical mass of humans is achieved outside of earth orbit, I'm willing to bet that the people working at Scaled
Composites were on their way towards doing more for human freedom than NASA did in the past 40 years.
"Near orbit"? Human freedom? Time for a reality check.
Present day. Present time.
Exactly so their deaths did expose something, and a small step forward was taken. Was their deaths worth the step? Could we have spent enough resources to avoid their deaths? That is what engineers and program managers deal with every time. Maybe we just should not be going into space or doing any of the interesting things that some of us risk our lives doing, but it is just human nature to do them anyway.
Again, your loss is profound and appropriate. Losing my Father was a world altering trajedy for me. It was a terrible loss for friends and family, my Father was a much loved man. It however didn't make the evening news, and it was any different for me than the 10,000 other families around the world that lost their Fathers that day.
Losing a leader, any leader, a president, a religious leader, an astronaut, an artist, a saint, a person of great compassion, intelligence, dignity, or humanity, losing any public figure like this impacts us all. It's different than the private loss of a loved one.
It's the difference between having a Cesna lose power and crash into your house, VS 9/11. One is a private loss, the other is very public, and there's something fundamentally different about public loss. Not worse, not more important, just different. The world occurs differently. The hurt doesn't come from the inside going out but instead the other way.
I want to make this clear. Your loss is your loss, and nothing can dimish that. To lose a public figure however, a public hero, someone you deeply respect for how they spent their one and only precious life, this loss touches all of us deeply, and it's that common loss that binds us and makes us human.
Wasn't it just announced that Scaled Composites was being purchased by Northrup Grumman, like yesterday? My condolences to those involved also.
Oxidizers are no joke. Liquid Oxygen is much worse then dealing with Liquid Hydrogen. Drop Liquid Oxygen on asphalt and you get yourself a bang and a hole. High pressure Liquid Oxygen likes to make all sorts of things fuel like titanium and even stainless steels. You have to go into the nickel alloys like Inconnel and Monel. I'm wondering if they didn't push Liquid Nitros Oxide too far for the materials they were using. I've seen just a little piece of debris travel in a Liquid Oxygen line and when it turns a corner or goes into a pump BLAM! no more pump. The oxygen oxidizes the whole thing.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
What about more iron in pure form then have ever been mined on earth.
Cancer(the old age cancers and other old age diseases like Alzheimer) is because we are living longer.
Exploring the oceans is dangerous(1800) so why do it?
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
I am one of the sisters of Todd, the "third" that died in the Scaled Composite explosion. Thank you to all who are thinking of our family and the other families. We are devastated. Our mom and dad are in CA now after a long flight from Alaska. They have much to wrap up there before being able to arrange a memorial service for Todd, including identifying him at the coroner's office. Can imagine doing that? Can you imagine going through your son's things and packing them up? Can imagine how family would feel after reading several of the threads? Can you imagine that even though he was only one of thousands that died that day, that a family would grieve over this? Can you imagine that? Some of you, some of you not. I stubbled over this site while looking for an explanation of what happened. I am an engineer, and I really just wanted to understand what happened, not find blame, just the facts and understanding. There is very little known, but some of you gave me some much need knowledge about how these engines work, NO2, compressed gas cylinders, etc. I really didn't need to read all the threads about whether these deaths were significant or not. Please let every key stroke be well thought out of who might be reading it. Most of the threads were written within a 24 hour period, and lives go on, but your words are still out there. Thank you again to all the informative and condoling people.
*cough* Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11, Nedelin, Challenger, Columbia, Alcantara, Intelsat 708 *cough*
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere