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Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes
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.
Wow, with the Orbital Sciences launch failure and now this, it is really turning into a bad week for privately funded spaceflight.
Enigma
Apparently, "anomaly" is a synonym for exploded into may tiny pieces.
Who knew?
Kidding aside it's a sad day for the family of the person killed.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
As in the kind of setback that could put them out of business entirely. This isn't a cargo ship.
I've been following this project since I saw that great documentary "Black Sky" on SpaceshipOne. It really does look like the first truly reliable commercial means for someone to go into "space" without being an astronaut/cosmonaut or being insanely wealthy. Of course, at $200,000, it isn't within reach of most of us--but it's a helluva lot better than the $20 million that some have spent in the past.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think I may have posted years ago this was sadly inevitable and a bad investment for states subsidizing “space ports”. We may put up with the occasional loss of life in pursuit of loftier goals, but suffer any deaths in pursuit of “space tourism” and it would probably be the death knell for the industry.
Have any of these “space ports” entered the construction phase? Surely backers will see this as good money after bad now. This coming so shortly after the Antares rocket explosion can only seem to amplify the perceived risk of attempting flights into space.
I’m all for progress, but how about we wait until access to space for industry and government is routine before we think about tourism?
Letter To Iran
which is the most forward instrument in the space opera, "ours all go boom."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
We are well past the time when these first tests must be manned. It isn't 1950.
I take it this is considered space exploration. Is this then the first death in commercial/private space exploration? I know in aviation one of the Wright brothers died during a test flight, and a great many busted their asses trying foolish stuff for centuries, but I don't know about space exploration.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Does Spaceshiptwo have ejection seats or do the pilots have to manually open a hatch and jump out?
True, but rightly or wrongly those people are perceived of has being in control of their own fate and could have escaped death with better decisions. Here you just strap your butt to someone else’s bomb.
Letter To Iran
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!
This is space tourism.
And yes, this might well be considered the first death in commercial space tourism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Spaceflight is dangerous. I think the best quote ever was by Mary Shafer of NASA who said "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." These people clearly don't suffer that problem.
I thank the explorers who take these risks, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Without them the world would be a much smaller and worse place. It's hard to even imagine the courage it must take to cross an ocean to an unknown continent or to fly into space. People who do these things have my everlasting respect.
Per aspera ad astra ("A rough road leads to the stars")
Don't conventional liquid engines give significantly more thrust per weight of propellent. From everything I've read, these hybrid designs are also far less controllable and have all sorts of odd dynamics as the solid propellent burns away.
I know in aviation one of the Wright brothers died during a test flight.
One died of typhoid in 1912 and the other of a heart attack in 1948.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Burt Rutan, the designer of the Spaceship One and Two, has been a hero, perhaps the hero, of my life. A passionate, innovative aircraft designer; unbelievably aggressive in trying new things, pushing boundaries that nobody even knew existed.
His first plane design, the VariViggen was an astonishingly different design than anything out there before; designed while a student at Cal Poly and built in his garage. And it flew beautifully. I saw that plane, his later VariEze and LongEz flying in formation at the Oshkosh Fly-in in 1980.
He set up a shop at the Mojave Airport, called Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF). In the middle of nowhere, nothing there but space to build new planes, and he built many. Each one more exotic than the last. His Boomerang, his last personal plane, is so far from the standard boring airplane designs that most people wouldn't believe it could fly; but it does fly, efficiently, safely, and every apparently crazy design idea has absolutely solid engineering and aerodynamic backing.
I took my 14-year-old daughter to see the first flight into space of Spaceship One in 2004. Burt's long-time co-worker and chief test pilot, Mike Melville, flew it that day. As it was climbing to space, it started to spin, pretty fast (about 60 rpm.) Melville said that he was scared for a second, but then decided to wait until he was "in the safety of space" to arrest the spin. A test pilot, flying an experimental winged spaceship, who has never flown to space before, in a plane spinning at Mach 3, decides in a second to wait until he was in the safety of space. And of course, it worked out; he was able to use the reaction control system to arrest the spin; took out some candy to float around the cockpit, took some photos out the windows, and enjoyed the five minutes of weightlessness. Just one of a thousand, maybe ten thousand adventures in Burt's long career.
I've wondered my whole life about how Burt responds when people die flying planes of his design. In 1983, while at Oshkosh, a VariEze crashed approaching the airport (it looks as if the linkage between the control stick and the elevator failed.) Burt, up on stage, described his trip out to the crash site. As professional as he could be, but I felt it must have been tearing him up inside. He gave the gift of flight to thousands of enthusiasts, but those great planes took the lives of some of those people. How do you reconcile that? I'm not sure I could have, or can today.
Burt got out of the homebuilt airplane business after being sued too many times by the survivors of crashes. In the last suit, the guy built the plane incredibly wrong, instead of using the 10 layers of fiberglass to attack the fins to the wing, he just glued them on. Astonishingly, it held up for years, but finally broke during a low-high-speed pass. Burt won all the lawsuits, but it was clear that he would spend years defending himself instead of doing what he loved, so he closed the shop.
Burt retired a few years ago, and lives up in Idaho instead of Mojave. Sadly, for all the innovation he created over the years, there were no commercial successes. This looked like it might be the one, but it's never going to happen.
This is not the first death in the program; sadly. While testing a previous engine about 5 years ago, the nitrous oxide detonated, killing three of his engineers. I mourned for them, and for the pilot today. My joy over my whole adult life in seeing the achievements of Rutan and his team are about evenly matched by the heartache I feel for them today. They haven't announced the name of the pilot who died today, but may he rest in peace.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I thought this ship was suborbital. Re-entry isn't a big huge deal if you're not going multiple km/s sideways. The red bull space dive thing just had a guy in a spacesuit.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
... as others have said... bad week.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I know in aviation one of the Wright brothers died during a test flight.
On September 17, 1008, Army lieutenant Thomas Selfridge rode along as Orville's passenger, serving as an official observer. A few minutes into the flight at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 m), a propeller split and shattered, sending the Flyer out of control. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull in the crash and died that evening in the nearby Army hospital, becoming the first airplane crash fatality. Orville was badly injured, suffering a broken left leg and four broken ribs. Twelve years later, after he suffered increasingly severe pains, X-rays revealed the accident had also caused three hip bone fractures and a dislocated hip.
Wright Brothers
Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912, Orville of a heart attack in 1948.
lol - wrong country. ex-CAF Army - built into all rocket tech by Russia back when this engine was made but you civvies don't know that, do you?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One of the brothers did crash a plane, but only suffered minor injuries.
I think he killed his passenger though.
Are you out of your friggin mind?
No. My mother had me checked.
No disrespect to them, but these guys weren't explorers.
That is very disrespectful to them and they most certainly were/are explorers. Being a test pilot is most definitely a form of exploration. You think those aircraft are safe the moment they roll out of the factory? You think that anything involving spaceflight is routine? That's pretty clueless. They were flying an unproven aircraft which is part of an unproven space launch platform. If that isn't exploration then nothing is.
One of the Wrights crashed with a signal corp Lt, I believe. Was the first aircraft death. The Wright got banged up a bit, but lived.
It wasn't Justin Bieber's scheduled flight.
Two spaceship crashes in one week does seem awful suspicious, so sabotage seems like a plausible explanation. Likewise Russia seems like a plausible culprit given the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. But I'm not aware of any actual evidence to support these reasonable guesses.
I kinda doubt the Chinese would be involved. Current relations between Bushbama regime and CCP are, outwardly, pretty cordial.
No idea. Have no field intel to this effect. But my suspicion meter is on yellow.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The red bull space dive thing just had a guy in a spacesuit.
You're right that we're not talking about a Mach 25+ reentry, but Baumgartner and Eustace jumped from less than half the altitude the Virgin craft will be reaching.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
There is nothing to see here
I disagree, I can think of nothing the 1% desperately need more than a spoonful of humility.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This whole commercial vs government funded, ethics and morals, etc etc all hashed out in a Star Trek movie?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
VG knew seven years ago that nitrous was unscalable and randomly dangerous. They should have switched then to plans for spaceship three, skipped spaceship two. Instead, they aren't going to see either.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
Oh the hypocrisy! Two threads up you were trotting out the whole "In what sense, exactly, is killing the crew one time in sixty 'extremely safe'?" bullshit, but it's ok to give a pass to airplanes? Now I know you aren't actually here to talk about anything. You're just here to argue with any side, either side, and both sides. You enjoy the sound your keyboard makes when you pound on it. Nothing more, nothing less.
But 1903 came at the end of a century in which risk was an accepted part of exploration of any kind. If the Donner party experience had occurred in the context of today's culture, California would still be unpopulated.
Yup. Thomas Selfridge was the name. I remembered a death in one of the early flights and I my bad memory thought it was one of the brothers.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
I saw a show where they launched and turned the wings and floated back. They also were testing the solid boosters too, which was some type of recycled rubber. One thing I noticed was as they left the atmosphere the thrust vector was really sporadic, not smooth at all like other rockets. Oh, and at one point the on-board computer died but luckily the pilot was highly skilled and landed it anyway...and I don't think the pilot that died was that guy either; he was pretty old lol.
Of course it's a bad week for running spaceflight as a cottage industry instead of something with the expertise of a group like NASA behind the private groups. We've set it to be far too much of a hands off approach and the lack of expertise available for purely political reasons is showing.
We have private nuclear with the involvement of a lot of government experts and government help so why can't we run spaceflight the same way instead of this odd and now tragic experiment in pretend private enterprise? It's not real private enterprise because governments are the main customer and define a major portion of each business.
Try this - space travel is hard so you have to put a shitload of effort in and need the resources of a government or similar behind you to progress. So far that has been well and truly worth it and will be in the future, but pretending it's going to be easy is just setting up for "where's my flying car" disappointment.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.
It appears that the accident is linked to the use of new fuel and related modification to the engine. Unfortunately, no amount ground testing can guarantee safety in the air. This is true for jet-engines as well. However, a jet-engine failure rarely leads to a deadly outcome for the testing crew. In most cases, the pilot can land the plane safely even with a severely damaged engine. Failure of a rocket-engine leads to a large uncontained explosion with little chance for the crew to survive. In the age of drones, we should not use human beings during such tests.
With the exception of universal health care, housing, clean water, living wages...