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."

Comments

Re:Not surprised...

[jollyreaper]

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. The pilots in the Air Force Thunderbirds are living on the edge and pushing the boundaries but none of them would consider lives lost a measure of progress, they would see it as a sign that the training is deficient. The danger is always there and sometimes shit happens but I wouldn't call it progress. Did Challenger show we were making process in space exploration or did it show that when in doubt, management should Listen to the Fucking Engineers(tm).

It Happens

[DynaSoar]

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.