SpaceShipTwo Reactions
Comments from Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic
“This is a very tough time for all of us at Virgin Galactic, The Spaceship Company and Scaled Composites, and our thoughts remain with the families of the brave Scaled pilots, and all those affected by this tragedy. We are determined to find out what went wrong and are working with the authorities to get that information. It is too early for me to add any details of the investigation at this stage.”
Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo and Pilot Lost During Test Flight
“On it’s fourth powered test flight Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was lost. The flight had a pilot and co-pilot. One did not survive, while the other was seriously injured. The drama unfolded in real time through social media.”
On SpaceShipTwo and why space matters, Michael Belfiore
“… I say that money and time and effort and even lives spent reaching beyond the boundaries of Earth lift us all, even those of us who may never fly. … To the pilot who gave his life and to the one who was injured yesterday, I say, “Thank you.” Thank you for helping us all to look up. Thank you for doing what most of us lack the courage and the skill and the talent to do. And to their families, I also say, “Thank you.” Thank you for sharing your loved ones with a dream that’s much bigger than an individual or a family. Thank you for allowing them to risk all to make the world a better place.”
– SNC Statement in Response to Inquiries Regarding Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Incident
– Space Frontier Foundation Mourns This Week’s Events Involving SpaceShipTwo and Orb-3
– Media Update from Virgin Galactic – Oct. 31, 2014 6:15PM PST
– Statement from New Mexico Spaceport Authority on the SpaceShipTwo Mishap
– Statement from NASA Administrator on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Mishap
– FAA Statement on SpaceShipTwo Incident
– Smith, Palazzo Statement on SpaceShipTwo Anomaly
I am still amazed 36 hours after the incident there still is no video being released. Have seen on 3 in flight pictures and nothing. Really suprising.
If those videos have not been impounded as evidence, then NTSB aren’t doing their jobs right.
Even as evidence does not mean they can’t be released.
Is the NTSB supposed to have instant remote confiscation power assisted by omniscience in all videos recorded of a certain place and time?
That said, I imagine people are providing them video they recorded proactively, and they are gathering from known sources as much as they can, and maybe nobody wants to release video of a deadly accident like this, at least yet.
CD,
Why would they comment?
I don’t recall either commenting on the business aircraft that crashed into a building in Wichita a couple days ago-really no difference between the two crashes because VGSS2 is a private and not a national effort.
You do.
i’m amazed at some of the rhetoric and expectations here. By all accounts a fine man died doing something he loved but is very risky. But lets be clear this isn’t breaking the boundaries of technology. Its not exploring the heavens.its no more a national tragedy than any other run of the mill private plane crash. other than the fact that this is an endeavor best described as the worlds most expensive thrill ride. It is a chance for the super rich to have a hell of a good ride. another lamborghini in the garage kind of status among their friends. it is really nothing more than that. Branson has 500 million sunk into this egocentric project. and Fridays flight tells you that developing a vehicle to get to space even if its just a ballistic carnival ride for Brad Pitt is expensive. very expensive. if he got the ticket price down an order of magnitude its still just a carny ride for the super rich. that’s what space tourism is and always will be… this week was a message from physics: get real.
Rock, You summed it up nicely.
I believe that space tourism is more of a distraction than it is an advancement. At this time none of companies are breaking orbit or ever plan to.
So what’s the point other than a carnival ride for the super rich?
The science you say?
Nope, It’s much cheaper to send experiments up via sub orbital sounding rocket, same science, same destination, less fuss less muss.
Have to disagree with you- to a point. Yes, these sub-orbital rides border on silly, and no, it’s not earth-shattering tech.
But: At some point, tourism will reach 17,500 MPH. And ANY way we can get into orbit moves the ball forward. Any tech needed to support the rich on orbit is important.
We cannot become a space-living race until we develop the tools to move about and live comfortably in space (sounds like a far-off dream, looking at the future from 2014; but it will be sooner with tourism efforts). Provide tools for the rich. Let them bear the development costs.
But do it. Even moving rocks about counts.
“ANY way we can get into orbit moves the ball forward”
This was exactly my point–sub orbital is far from getting into orbit and never will–to do so requires many more orders of magnitude of propulsive power.
Sure, tourism has already reached 17,500mph for state sponsored congressmen or the insanely rich.
Sub orbital hops like Virgin are not economical for research and most likely not conducive to good science–there is more to microgravity science than just being in microgravity.
I have no doubt that in the not too distant future SpaceX will be able to offer trips to space, but again…….only for the insanely rich.
Rockofritters: …this week was a message from physics: get real.
A message from physics? If you mean that the engineering needed to properly control the physics involved in rocketry is difficult, I would agree. But I think your statement could be misread as claiming that physics prohibits flight into space. This is obviously untrue.
I know ..lets get out our copper swords… oops .. I guess we figured out how to make better materials .. get out our bronze swords… oh oh .. I guess we figured out how to make better materials .. okay then .. iron swords can’t do better than that .. damn .. STEEL .. sheesh doesn’t this just ever end? We MUST know EVERYTHING currently correct? Can not move past this point in knowledge… ever …
The point that Rock and Chris are making is that in the process of refining designs, materials and hardware, the cost of the finished product goes up exponentially.
Case in point, look at the Space Shuttle-no matter how many times it flew–it never got cheaper.
and the cost of all products have over time always had costs that have gone exponetially up and never came down? The only direction that cost ever moves is only up? Everything you say is exactly the opposite of the entire history or humanity.
Comparing the space shuttle costs, that operated within a government contracting scheme that had been developing over the course of 50 years and the market is divorcing costs from the market realities. Cost plus, fixed fee, sole sourced, non competitively bid so that political districts maximize costs and labor inputs directly opposed to market based pricing is silly.
Here is how divorced from reality that Congressional porkonauts really are. They wanted 1.5 billion shuttle launches to put 7 crew and 25 tons of cargo into LEO. Commercial launches today can achieve that for about 300 million. (once commercial crew starts up in the next couple years)
The SLS/Orion is going to cost anywhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 – 3.5 billion per launch to put 4 people into LEO or a Lunar flyby. ALL disposable to maximize funding in political districts. So to offer up the space shuttle as reason why prices go up .. well the porkonauts designed the system to do exactly that.
No, that’s not the point I was making. My view is that even with expensive, hard-to-machine materials like rhenium and complex engineering processes, value engineering and mass production can lower the cost of space travel into the commercial range. This won’t happen soon, and it may never be as affordable as air travel is today. But I wouldn’t rule that out either.
Further, I think your characterization of space tourism as nothing but an expensive thrill ride and an egocentric project is too narrow a view. The same could be said of the stunt flying (aka barnstorming) that began in the 1920s and is still with us. And it was a spectacle for public entertainment. But it also advanced the state of the art in aviation, which led to today’s commercial airlines. Do not overlook the parallel with private suborbital flight.
your analogy is apples and oranges. barnstorming may have exposed the average kid in some rural town to airplanes and birthed Chuck Yeager. But this nonsense is strictly about the super rich getting a thrill ride. there is no path whatsoever to bringing space travel down to even a large multiple of an airplane ride. That was the part about physics screaming out. rockets are hard and it will ALWAYS be super expensive to make reliable ones. There is NO path to making affordable reliable rockets on par with airline travel. its simple physics. really high temperatures and really high pressures and really extreme performance requirements push you to REALLY expensive materials, analysis, engineering, testing and manufacturing standards. and even with all that you can never be as certain that a rocket engine or solid motor won’t blow as you can with an aircraft engine.
and by the way the reason “old space” gave up on a bunch of propellant combos in the 60’s is because they’re in the unreliable pile. thus only side show guys are doing “hybrid” rockets.
Jet engines are more difficult to build than piston or turboprop engines because higher temperatures and stresses are involved. Jet aircraft used to have four or more engines, for safety. Today, a number of airliners have three or even just two. This is now deemed reliable enough by the FAA and by industry. Rocket engines operate in a still more stressful regime than jet engines, but I see no reason to project that spacecraft will never be reliable enough for affordable commercial passenger service.
Chris, I work every single day with THE best hardware the aerospace industry can provide and I can easily say that a lot of it is far from reliable. Jet engine rotor and stator blades are far different from valves, solenoids, pumps and injectors. We have come very very far in the last 30yrs with manufacturing, reliability and repeatability but we still have a long way to go. But I have no doubt that 50yrs from now we will be 50yrs better.
Gosh .. you are indeed one hell of a fortune teller. We might as well disband the patent office. Someone here on NASAwatch can see into the future of material sciences, rocket propulsion, fuel mixes … wow..
can you give me a list of stocks to invest in.. As you have so well informed us everything new under the sun has already been invented and we can not move past this exact point in time in any of the sciences so you MUST know which companies are the future…
oops .. there is no new future .. everything has already been invented and all knowledge is now known.
Yea. And it’s impossible to fly, too. Just ask Lord Kelvin.
The prior accident was worse, in that three lives were lost. The Obama Administration is regularly pilloried by members of Congress for being too supportive of commercial human spaceflight. Maybe they just don’t want to throw yet another issue into the arena of political blood sports. It’s a potential morass because Joël Glenn Brenner is accusing Virgin of negligence.
Go and take your anti-Obama rant somewhere else.
If Obama HAD made a comment or if Biden visited the site of the crash, you would have some rant about their hidden political agenda in doing so.
I know your kind.
Gonzo_Skeptic
But you obviously have no agenda?
Cessna Drivers observation and post is legit.
If you have an agenda and need to bring him into everything.
Over 100 people died in car crashes across the U.S. that same day .. gosh .. Obama didn’t mention them either. Oops .. 18 murders .. didn’t say anthing about them either. oh oh .. a lady slipped in the bathtub and cracked her head and died..
can you freakin’ believe it? The President of the United States didn’t acknowledger her death and go visit her bathroom and talk about wet tile safely in the U.S.
A post on another forum, do we give up or learn and move on. I think we need to do the latter. Though SS2 vehicle is mostly a brief joy ride for rich people (but I’m certain researchers booked some flights for microgravity experiments), this vehicle is actual hardware for us to gain experience and learn what works and what doesn’t work. Perhaps its legacy is like those barnstormers of the 1920s and 1930s always pushing for more speed (not all were reckless, some painfully learned handling new kinds of flight). It is what they did is how we now can cruise across the continents and oceans affording us to complain about the food and TSA instead of hazards flying at high subsonic speeds at altitudes too thin to breathe. Right now spaceflight including suborbital is extremely dangerous, I hope with lessons learned we can go beyond where technology matures so most debates will be about the commerce.
I think it is best Obama and Biden not visit anywhere near Mojave. Reason is they have a huge entourage of secret service, Capitol Police, military, White House staff, numerous vehicles, aircraft. The entire area would have to be TFR, limited access, etc. Plus cellphone and Iridium coverage would go way down. NTSB has a full enough plate already.
Every word out of THIS President’s mouth is immediatly wrong and immediatly pilloried by the conservative right wing. If he says this was a tragedy then the right wingers will IMMEDIATLY say this could have been prevented if ONLY THIS President would have did something.