Virgin Galactic's Two Has Crashed, One Pilot Confirmed Dead

[timothy]

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Has Crashed, One Pilot Confirmed Dead

 

Virgin Galactic is reporting that there has been an "in-flight anomaly" aboard SpaceShipTwo. There were unconfirmed reports that one of the two pilots is dead. Those reports have now been confirmed. The suborbital flight took off at 9:19am PDT from the Mojave Air and Spaceport in California. Update: Virgin Galactic has confirmed that SpaceshipTwo has crashed and the California Highway Patrol has confirmed that there is one fatality and one major injury.

The flight marked the first use of a new type of fuel to power the ship's engine. As Aviation Week reports, Virgin Galactic, along with their partner Scaled Composites were testing a new hybrid type rocket motor with the new fuel:

The flight was testing the performance of the new polyamide-based grain that was adopted in place of the hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene, a form of rubber that was used for the first series of powered tests. Scaled and Virgin, which announced the decision to change to the new fuel in May, made the switch in hopes of providing a longer, more energetic burn with lower thrust oscillations.

 

From NBC News:

The reported anomaly came after SpaceShipTwo fired up its rocket engine in flight for the 

first time in more than nine months

. Since then, Virgin Galactic has 

switched the plane's fuel mixture

 from a rubber-based compound to a plastic-based mix — in hopes that the new formulation would boost the hybrid rocket engine's performance.

 

 

Reports are coming in from people on the ground talking about the debris sites:

 

 

Parabolicarc.com @spacecom

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Back in Mojave now. Ss2 had trouble with engine burn, blew up, came down in pieces near Koehn Lake.

 

 

Parabolicarc.com @spacecom

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We drove to one of the debris sites. Debris from the ship was scattered all over the road. @VirginGalactic #SpaceShipTwo

 

ABC7 Eyewitness News        ✔ @ABC7

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#SpaceShipTwo UPDATE: Rescue crew seen carrying person on stretcher to chopper http://abc7.la/1toHq4B 

 

Virgin Galactic has issued a statement confirming the loss of the vehicle, but say that the status of the pilots is still unknown. Update: The California Highway Patrol has confirmed that there is one fatality and one major injury.

 

From Virgin Galactic:

 

 

Virgin Galactic's partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo earlier today. During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle. The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time. We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident and provide updates as soon as we are able to do so.

 

 

AviationSafety @AviationSafety

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#SpaceShipTwo (N339SS) lost during test flight; two crew reportedly ejected.

 

 

This is obviously a major setback for Virgin Galactic and its partners, who have been promising to put space tourists on regular flights for over a decade now. And things don't look good, according to the people who have been covering Virgin Galactic.

Today's crash was in the Mojave Desert in California, but the facility where space tourism flights were supposed to take off in the next couple of years is Spaceport America in New Mexico. The facility has gotten heat for being heavily subsidized by the state, but the advertised trade off has always been that the facility would provide an influx of jobs and money into the state. Today's crash leaves that in doubt.

Video from CNN with Joël Glenn Brenner, a former reporter for the Washington Post who covers Virgin Galactic and is friends with the pilots:

"The enthusiasm that has been shown outwardly by Virgin Galactic and by Sir Richard certainly does not match at all with the technology behind the scenes," Brenner, who is currently working on a book about Virgin Galactic, told CNN. "There's a big gap there and has been for quite some time."

Richard Branson is reportedly en route to the Mojave Spaceport, according to CNN.

"This engine that exploded today, even if they had had a successful flight, and even if they had not stolen my friend's life, okay," Brenner said choking up on CNN. "...they would not have ever gotten anywhere near space with this engine, okay?"

"So I am here to say that they took this pilot's life and this engine still would not have gotten customers to space. And I want people to know that now and I am sure that Virgin Galactic is going to be very unhappy with me," Brenner said. "We're telling the truth. But it is time the truth be told. Because that is the truth."

"They do not have any vehicle anywhere near completion," Joël Glenn Brenner has told CNN, noting that they don't have another aircraft waiting in the wings. "This really marks the end for what they can do."

The new engine reportedly blew up within the first six seconds of ignition. Both pilots were civilian pilots, meaning that they did not go through military flight training.

 

 

Richard Branson        ✔ @richardbranson

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Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled, thanks for all your messages of support. I'm flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team.

4:04 PM - 31 Oct 2014

 

As Motherboard notes, three employees of Virgin Galactic's partner, Scaled Composites, were killed during an accident back in 2007. That accident also took place at the Mojave Air and Spaceport and happened when they were testing a rocket system for the SpaceShipTwo.

NBC has a livestream of the press conference about the crash of SpaceShipTwo, which starts at 2pm Pacific time, 5pm Eastern:

http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/live-video/watch-live-officials-discuss-virgin-galactic-s-spaceshiptwo-crash-322485827772

 

 

The crash occurred approximately 25 miles north of the airport, according to Stu Witt, the director of the Mojave Air and Spaceport. Everyone at the press conference has confirmed that there was one fatality and one serious injury as a result of the "mishap."

The National Transportation and Safety Board will arrive and begin their investigation into the crash tomorrow morning.

"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," the CEO of Virgin Galactic, George T. Whitesides said. He noted that Richard Branson will be on site by tomorrow morning as well.

"We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we're going to get through it," Whitesides said. "The future rests in many ways on hard days like this, but we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks that were working so hard on them to understand this, and to move forward."

The director of the air and spaceport said that from his vantage point he couldn't see any explosion, as some reports in the media had claimed.

"This was a pure test, not a public event. I detected nothing that appeared abnormal," Stu Witt said. "I couldn't detect anything. There was a pause of about 90 seconds [...] It was what I was not hearing and not seeing. If there was a huge explosion I didn't hear it, I didn't see it."

The two test pilots have not yet been identified but it was confirmed that they were both employees of Space Composites, not Virgin Galactic.

"We're doing this for you and for your generation," Stu Witt said referring to the future of space travel. "Stay the course. This business is a worthy, good business. This business is not easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be interesting."

Oringal post form gizmodo.com : http://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-experiences-first-major-accident-possi-1653360863?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[ZetZet]

Testing with pilots in 2014 is stupid. Just sayin'.

 

Wow thats the second explosion in the past few days seems space exploration is coming back finally. that lady on the YouTube video is sooo god damn annoying she sounds drunk and how does she even know it wouldn't of like wtf 

She sounds sad, but she's talking BS, if the pilot was on that flight he knew the risks.

[JAKEBAB]

Wow thats the second explosion in the past few days seems space exploration is coming back finally. that lady on the YouTube video is sooo god damn annoying she sounds drunk and how does she even know it wouldn't of like wtf

[SpaceCore]

Lets hope this event doesn't set us back 10 years.

[Jaybird]

ew CNN. its like reading click bait but audible. gross. 

 

rough week for space science. 

[qwertywarrior]

i wonder

are pilots really necessary ?

[bob345]

i wonder

are pilots really necessary ?

not really, but this craft is made to take people into low orbit though.

[The_Strict_Nein]

i wonder

are pilots really necessary ?

They said on the BBC they had pilots to monitor real time changes in feel and handling of the craft, and adjust them for future tests.

People have to remember, there are 30,000 car crash deaths in the UK alone each year. We haven't stopped driving cars. Rocket technology has essentially been dormant for 35 years because the Soyez is cheap (but inefficient and single use) and reliable, and NASA doesn't have the money. And they're sure as hell not allowed to share their rocket tech with private agencies because of the government.

[Trik'Stari]

Yeah the dick on CNN talking shit about them needs to shut the fuck up. Your friend was a test pilot, he knew exactly what he was doing and thought that it was important enough to risk his life over, show some fucking respect.

 

In pioneering anything, there will always be those brave few who give their lives willingly for scientific progress, it is unfortunate but true, and to speak ill of the initiative that they thought important enough to risk their lives over, is just shameful.

 

Should there be an investigation? yes, there will be, obviously. But to look at one crash and say "well, time to give up, back to the caves we go" is just completely idiotic, and CNN wonder's why it's ratings have been declining.

[NoobsWeStand]

Hmmm. Interesting.

I actually had to write a paper about Virgin Galactic during my Astronomy college class

 

But yeah, that sucks. They have to rebuild a large portion of the spacecraft, and get new pilots. Not only that, it takes a lot of time and money to do so.

I hope they can recover from this

[Trik'Stari]

Test Pilots will always be necessary, no machine currently in existence can fully replace a human being for testing a new aircraft. Sure, you can do a scaled down version of the same aircraft as a drone to determine if it will fly or not, but only a test pilot will be able to tell you what it's like to fly the craft, what the ride is like, sound, etc. Afterall, these are crafts intended to carry humans.

 

It's a sad necessity.

[RazeG3SG1]

R.I.P

[Yoinkerman]

We're trying to redevelop flying into and around space.  Stuff is going to go wrong, and people are going to die.  It's the price of progress.  A dire one indeed.  But one worth it if kept within reason.

[cesrai]

He knew what he was doing, he knew he might have died, I think the women is trying to get her 2 seconds of fame and sell her book.

[Davehaslanded]

Whilst not the most important issue at the moment, and my thoughts are with the 2 pilots and their families, Virgin were mid way through building a second ship, so i'm assuming they dont have another one at this time. Going to set them back months if not years. The crashed ship had already clocked several hours of test flights. Not sure if they have to redo all of them again with the new craft, especially if the crash investigation leads to a substantial revision to design. Sad day for science, tech and mankind as a whole.