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Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes

Posted by Soulskill on from the keep-trying dept.

Fallen Kell writes: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has crashed. "'During the test. the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle,' the company said in a statement. "The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time.'"" ABC says one person is dead, and another injured. This was the craft's fourth powered test flight, and its first since January.

6 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sad, regrettable and probably inevitable. by steamraven · · Score: 3, Informative

    Spaceport America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America) is one of these "space ports" in my area. While I don't think this was a good investment for the local governments, it is operational and launching rockets. Virgin Galactic is the main company but there are several others. This includes SpaceX who is doing testing here (Their main spaceport will be in Texas).

  2. Re:Is this the first death in commercial space exp by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Informative

    In flight, definitely. But sadly not the first fatality for commercial space flight, or for Virgin come to that, Scaled Composites had an explosion during a ground test that killed three people in 2007. That set back didn't halt development, and I hope this one doesn't either.

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  3. Per aspera ad astra by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Per aspera ad astra ("A rough road leads to the stars")

  4. Re:Using NASA's dictionary by necro81 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wish I could dredge up some examples, but I seem to remember seeing some things which some of the astronauts said in the middle of a crisis which made them sound like it was just a little thing, when the rest of us would all be screaming "we're all gonna die we're all gonna die".

    "Houston, we have a problem" when an oxygen tank has just exploded and practically ripped the service module in half. Yup, that seems like a good start.

  5. Re:Not a good week... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Can you produce a single, real, living person who believes your straw man?

    Absolutely. There's this asshole:

    http://slashdot.org/~AchilleTa...

  6. Double tragedy by boundary · · Score: 1, Informative

    It wasn't Justin Bieber's scheduled flight.