Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Lost In Accident
#SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming.
— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October 31, 2014
Marc’s note: According to CNN, SpaceShipTwo’s engine started and ran for a few seconds but then stopped. It then restarted and exploded. One pilot managed to eject and use his parachute. The other apparently was not able to to eject and deploy his parachute.
FAA Statement on SpaceShipTwo Incident
“Just after 10 a.m. PDT today, ground controllers at the Mojave Spaceport lost contact with SpaceShipTwo, an experimental space flight vehicle. The incident occurred over the Mojave Desert shortly after the space flight vehicle separated from WhiteKnightTwo, the vehicle that carried it aloft. Two crew members were on board SpaceShipTwo at the time of the incident. WhiteKnightTwo remained airborne after the incident. The FAA is investigating.”
Statement from NASA Administrator on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Mishap
Statement from New Mexico Spaceport Authority on the SpaceShipTwo Mishap
Marc’s note: Keith will be on MSNBC at or around 8:00 p.m. EDT.
TONIGHT: Who? @KeithCowing, @KathaPollitt, @ProfessorCrunk, @timothynordwind, @feministabulous, @dorianwarren #inners
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) October 31, 2014
Energency crews report two on board, one survivor located.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 31, 2014
One patient with moderate neck and back injuries.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 31, 2014
@CNN is reporting "one pilot death and another with significant injuries" as a result of #spaceshiptwo accident
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 31, 2014
AlanStern @AlanStern
@Simberg_Space I am told they are on chute. From the scene,
Others are also reporting parachutes, and an NSF’er reports police scanner reports of debris and a chopper being sent out to look for the chutes.
A really bad week 🙁
In light of the recent Orbital flight saying there was an “in-flight anomaly” sure turns it into possible wild speculation.
ANY comments without an official report are speculation. So what? That’s what these forums are about. Everyone posting here engages in speculation.
My thoughts are with the pilots rather than being wasted on speculation. There will be time for speculation later.
Good luck with herding cats.
Well, isn’t it natural to respond to the loss of life and ship by wondering how it could have happened? I mean, after the initial mourning? I’ve been reviewing literature on how hybrid motors shed chunks of propellent into the chamber and their unstable chamber pressures, up to and including loss of the motor. As an example.
I think you are responding to the wrong person, because I’m in agreement with you, as stated above.
Rough week for commercial spaceflight.
Yes, but the Antares was just bent metal.
This is a tragedy because of the loss of life.
With all the delays up to now, will this spell the end of this effort?
the only way I can think of that they could possibly come back from this is a complete re-design of the vehicle. a SpaceShip3 (well, probably it would need a new name), with an all-liquid engine and ejection seats for all crew and passengers. this re-design would take years, and i doubt any of the investors will want to stay on board very long after this. In my personal opinion, Virgin Galactic is finished.
This and the Shuttle accidents prove that rocket powered human flight needs an escape system. Ejection seats, escape pod, escape rockets, etc.
Even though ejection seats were used on the first two shuttle flights–the methods of ejection seats are not conducive to sub orbital space flight.
Ejection seats were used in the X-15 and SR-71. They weren’t 100%, but did save some lives. These are aircraft that fly at similar speeds and altitudes as the Space Ship Two.
with 35,000 – 50,000 deaths on U.S. roadways each year the same could be said for cars.
OR
Just make the commercial vehicle more reliable than the test vehicle.
The Space Shuttle no longer flies because of no escape system. If it had one, it would still be flying today.
What insurance company would cover the Space Ship Two program? Premiums would be so high, Branson would probably have to do self coverage.
There are a lot higher priority reasons why the Space Shuttle is no longer flying.
Build your engine FIRST, see what it can actually do, then build the aircraft around it….
I hope you are wrong on that Doug. I am going to hold off on speculation of the cause of the incident until something more is known.
In the mean time best wishes for the onboard survivor, and condolences for the families.
Wonder if this will change Title 14, CFR 400?
My thoughts and prayers go to all involved.
No, damn it! No, just… no. This couldn’t have come at a worse time for space flight in the US after the loss of F9R Dev 1 and the far more recent Antares failure. Now this? This is a possible LOC and the vultures will almost certainly be circling.
When people are trying lots of new things, more things will break. It feels like it’s all going wrong, but it’s a sign of things actually moving in the right direction.
(Whatever someone thinks about Antares using old Russian engines, it is, nonetheless, a new launcher. Likewise, whatever you think about the design, SS2 is an attempt at commercialise a whole new type of flight. And whatever your feelings for Musk, F9RD1 is attempting a fundamentally new approach to space flight.)
K Street may well spin this for their own aerospace clients and their puppet Congressmen, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a sign of New Things Happening, which is good.
Moving in the right direction
Lessons learned, design improvements to success.
In a month Spacex will attempt to set a booster on a barge with a 50 50 chance of success. Should he wait because of these accidents? What if he puts a big hole through the middle of that barge and sinks it. All that bad press.
But progress will have been made.
I remain excited about moving forword.
Maybe we will get to see the first reusable rocket booster cooling off as it’s toed to harbor this year.
Again my thoughts for those lost 🙁
Terrible, terrible news…
Sir Richard Branson better get ready for the phone calls from people requesting a refund now.
In the 1960’s & 1970’s, Pan Am airlines had a reservations list for future passenger moon flights. It didn’t charge for making the reservation. It was mainly a publicity stunt.
Here’s a link to a news story.
http://news.google.com/news…
Still have that certificate around here somewhere…
http://abcnews.go.com/Techn…
Praying for the pilots and their families. This has been a terrible week for spaceflight.
witness reports (always to be taken with a grain of salt) are that the ship exploded or came apart just after separation from White Knight, and that pieces rained down, raising clouds of dust as they impacted.
If that’s true, it’s astonishing to me that there is a survivor.
True, to this day many people still think the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.
Are you making some kind of a sick joke?
I am referring to the common thing in aircraft accidents where people on the ground report that the plane “was on fire” or “was coming apart” when the accident in fact a landing mishap, etc.
In other words, when I posted my comment into moderation it was before details had come out, very scarce info was available… and so at that point it could have been a non-explosive failure for all we knew, with people one the ground misreporting.
Take for example that people reported “parachutes” and now it appears that only ONE pilot got out.
Initial on-the-ground eyewitness reports of aircraft accidents are notoriously unreliable.
“Are you making some kind of a sick joke?”
I beg your pardon?
My reply is directly germane to your statement regarding the unreliability of witness observations.
You used todays SS2 mishap as a direct example and I used the Challenger in reply.
In the case of Challenger, thousands of witnesses “thought” they saw the shuttle “explode” when in fact it did NOT.
Hence, our little discussion regarding witness unreliability.
Perhaps because it was so short, I missed the nuance in your comment. I was referring to “explosion” interpreted a little more broadly and colloquially. My apologies.
No problem Sir I think we just crossed signals but on same station.
Chill. ST was agreeing with you.
People are bad at interpreting aerospace accidents. In the Antares accident, as with Challenger, people saw the Range Safety systems detonate and believed they were seeing the cause of the accident. Or they see launch pyrotechnics, or flame-illuminated vapour and think they’re seeing fireballs.
There is a second SS2 in the final stages of construction but, in the light of this failure, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether Branson will be able to find investment to continue the development.
The second SS2 is far from the final stages of construction.
That desert is littered with the bones of test flights to get us where we are today in aerospace. The best way to honor them, and anyone who was injured or perished on this flight, is to push on. Prayers to the families, and Godspeed to Virgin Galactic.
The stated Space Ship Two crash site is near Koehn Dry Lake, Kern County, California. This is about 15 miles West-South-West of the 1968 X-15 #3 crash site (35.419841 N, -117.601815 W)
Sorry for the loss of life 🙁
There is another being built, it is a bit different.. it is ways away from completion last pictures I saw.
In 2007, 3 people were killed in a ground explosion during a test to develop propulsion systems for Space Ship Two. Here’s a link to that story at NBC News:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/1…
From CBS…
Try it again… from CBS,,,
One thing you notice about these crash debris compared to the average aircraft crash, no burning. Most aircraft have fuel tanks in the wings or fuselage, that ignite and burn during a crash. The rocket engine and propellant must have blown away from the rest of the craft in flight.
thats what I am thinking, OR most of the rubber (fuel) was burned away, OR it was a Nitrous overpressure situation that exploded the oxidizer system
Nylon, not rubber. It was using the new polyamide.
I wonder if this was the first or second flight test of the new engine?
Just speculating, but I bet the plastic fuel grain cracked and a massive overpressure occurred. Again, just a speculation.
This is the fourth person killed and fourth person severely injured making this future-less toy for rich kids.
First in flight use of the polyamide. There have been several static. There is a good video of an 8 May static test on youtube. SNC was quick to distance themselves from this.
duplicate post. Please delete.
A sad day and a tough week for Space.
In 2007 three people died during an engine test for Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites. Going from X Prize victory to operational business is proving difficult, expensive, and dangerous.
Space is hard.
Actually if memory serves me correctly it was not an engine test but a cold flow test of an injector using oxidizer and was more of a tank rupture? but I may be wrong it was a few years ago.
A massive high temperature overpressure shock
Yes, adiabatic compression and oxidizers is bad juju.
I read that the N2O was pressurized in an unlined nonconductive composite tank, and that a static discharge in the tank cause autocatalytic decomposition of the oxidizer, something which does not occur with LOX, though it has other hazards.
Vulture,
Thanks for the info-even that scenario doesn’t sound like something I would want to be near. I was surprised when I read of the deaths, I did plenty of high energy testing at NASA and we were never within the danger/blast zone of any test and we didn’t need a safety guy to tell us where that was at.
I agree, but I’m aware of some blowups at NASA where we were pretty lucky no one was hurt. In the case of Scaled Composites, they have a remarkable safety record with a wide range of composite aircraft from single-seaters to huge transports like WK2. But they did not have the same level of experience with rocket propulsion, and did not get the level of hands-on experience they needed on the use of hybrid propulsion to make the optimal decision. The hybrid concept has been around for many years and has not proven as effective or as safe as it seemed at first.
I agree 100%
If Virgin Galactic presses on (Big If) I just can’t see them continuing down the hybrid path.
But I don’t see them having the time or money to start over with any other propulsion system either.
Right now they have no vehicle and no viable propulsion system.
This is why I really do think Virgin Galactic is done and I have no doubt VG employees are already looking for new jobs.
Did the crew have full or partial pressure suits?
The reverberations of the July 2007 engine explosion are still being felt. From a PR standpoint this is even worse since the accident occurred during flight. Most people will sympathize with but not identify with ground test employees. But anyone who was even thinking of going on a Virgin Galactic flight will fully identify with the dead and injured of this accident, as they will realize that it could have been them. This all but guarantees the end of SpaceShipTwo, I am very sad to predict. But not the end of space tourism.
The comparison that comes to mind is the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet airliner. The difference is that the Comet carried passengers safely for exactly one year before it had its first fatal inflight accident. The public accepted the accident as an anomaly and continued to fly Comets, until the second and third accidents. De Havilland located the problem and tried to come back with a redesigned Comet but mainly sold them in South America and Africa. Of course jet passenger travel was not ultimately hindered, and the Comet is now looked back on as a true pioneer. Even if it never flies again, ultimately so will be SpaceShipTwo.
Yep, Square windows = Bad!
The Comet did survive for 60 years as variant. The Nimrod flew with the RAF until 3 years ago.
I think there is a difference between the Comet and SS2. The Comet was premature, but it was in the natural evolution of air travel, and the Boeing 707 a few years later was an outstanding success.
SS2 is a carnival ride dead end. Its only potential real world value was as a hypersonic craft to deliver VIPs or special cargo over a long distance at a fabulous cost.
The Lynx and similar craft will fill the carny ride need at much lower, but still outrageously high cost.
Companies building reliable, reusable craft to orbit have a real potential to build a market – tourism, university or commercial research, prestige, whatever. A fabulously expensive 15 minute amusement ride is a dead end.
My comparison with the Comet was solely about the willingness of the general public (not military personnel) to put their lives in the hands of new technology. There has been tremendous interest in Virgin Galactic by many people who are intrigued and excited by the idea of actually going into space, even if only briefly. But most of them will only do it if they feel that it is relatively safe.
That all changed today, not in reality perhaps, but in public perception, which again is the point since as you indicate in one sense this is a type of entertainment. But so were the early barnstorming rides which gave people five minutes in the air, which at the time was as novel as going into space. Barnstoming played at least a small role in the interest and acceptance of air travel by ordinary people. And yet for the first several decades only relatively wealthy ordinary people could travel by air. But of course that eventually changed, it just took time.
Thanks Steve for the reminder about barnstorming. I’ve always taken a very negative view of the Virgin enterprise, finding it silly in most respects, and dangerous to boot. But the comparison to barnstorming, if SS had worked, is a good one.
So carnival rides no longer exist? Of the seven BILLION people on the planet .. no one ever stands in line for carnival rides?
Kind of a silly arguement to make when you look at the roller coaster industry over the last century.
So what if it is a carnival ride? It is STILL an EXPERIENCE of space that you can achieve in your lifetime at a cost that is managable and will come down in cost over time. That suboribital carnival ride will come down over time and more and more people on the planet can enjoy that carnival ride.
Likewise, millionaires/billionaires pursue risky hobbies even when others have died doing the same thing. Driving twitchy exotic cars at high speed. Flying private experimental or hobby aircraft. Adventure treks, mountain climbing, etc. Branson’s many PR stunts being an example: High-speed ocean racing, around-the-world-ish balloon flights, etc.
Regarding SS2 and its future, I am confused. The many delays. The change of fuel so late in the testing phase. Now this accident. It all does make me think people will look at SS2 differently going forward.
I think the de Havilland Comet comparison may me right.
Branson sure sunk a lot of money into the project. According to Wikipedia, in 2007, Space Ship Two development costs were estimated at $ 108 million dollars. By 2011, development costs were estimated to be $ 400 million dollars.
Yes, but think of the tax advantages . . .
there would be none. Tax deductions only reduce income (that’s what that Adjusted Gross Income is all about).
Space could be different.
Once the company is running and showing revenue, development would be amortized against income but that’s the limit of my tax advice or my memory from accounting in grad school many years ago 🙂
Pure speculation at this point but the engine is the first place to look as the anomaly apparently occurred about the time of the attempted restart and did so much structural damage. The hybrid propulsion concept has been problematic in both safety and operating cost, and I think it is unlikely this approach will be tried in the future.
Did this one use the hybrid motor?
The polyamide fuel grain version..
This seems like a dead-end program. A flawed design with too many issues for tourism. Maybe okay as a research craft. Too bad Branson didn’t invest in an orbital tourism program with someone like SpaceX.
I’m very sad to see this has happened. We were discussing the dangers of SpaceShip Two on this very website 25 days ago: http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
“Safety is a HUGE issue–with the extremely dangerous fuel and oxidizer just a foot or two behind the seats–and the biggest reason why VG probably will never fly with paying passengers”
My condolences goes out to the family of the co-pilot and to Virgin Galactic. This is a tragedy that’ll take time to “heal” and learn but they must push onwards. Spaceflight is a risky business but the efforts will be rewarded.
The Daily Mail website has some pictures of the in-air explosion and the Space Ship Two coming apart. Reminds me of Challenger pictures:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…
One still picture appears to show the craft, with the wings separated from it, flying tail first with the engine flame in front (judging by the contrail behind it). Maybe the picture catches it tumbling during breakup. But it appears to be traveling tail first for that instant in the photo.
It’s not just a noble sounding slogan, it’s the cold hard truth.
Can’t this kind of testing be done with automation or remote control?