#SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. rumor parachutes seen, Confirmed Loss of vehicle

a reply to: Totemic

Remember, it's all about money. Some group has probably decided to go for the space money. Negative info is used to allow them a chance to get in by making others think they should be out of the industry. Just like manipulating the stock market.

i really hope this does not mean what i think it does, would set the civilian space program back massively

Even NASA had sent backs but that doesn't mean the death nail of private space flight.

The only thing it means.

It is going to take a little longer.

a reply to: neo96

I hate to say it but I hope your right...........The problem is today's risk aversion culture.

a reply to: crazyewok

I am a fan of what Kennedy once said.

We don't do things because they are easy, but because they are hard.

We will fall down, but if we never get back up?

We are doomed to eternity on this rock.

Mankinds future lies in the stars.

a reply to: neo96

I love that quote too.

And it is 100% true.

It why I went in to science. things like the moon landings and growing up in the era of the shuttle inspired me even if it was to go into biology not astrophysics.

Unfortunately many just dont see space like that or are inspired by it any more. Risk is something to avoid they just want the easy option the "i want it now attitude" so to speak, and that's in all walks of like it seems.

Sometime risk is needed be it strapping yourself to 100 tons of explosive rocket fuel or just simply using ones money and hard work to start a business.

a reply to: crazyewok

Kennedy's speech in full.

Think it applies to the thread.



Space travel even after 6+ decades is still relatively new.

a reply to: neo96

You have to think how long it took to develop safe sea travel and how many deaths it took.
How many of the old galleons and sailing ships were lost in the explorations of the seas? It took millennia for sea travel to mature from rafts to modern luxurious cruise ships.

I was four years old when my parents took us outside one evening in the backyard to look up at the starry sky for something special that night. And then it appeared, a large ball of white light moving across the stars as background in the dark sky over Los Angeles. Never before had humans seen a manmade object orbiting the Earth. Even to this child, seeing Sputnik was a memorable event.

Years later I would take my own children outside one evening to witness another ball of white light move across the sky. The space shuttle had taken humans to space and landed them back on a runway on Earth.

On tv during the the years leading up to manned spaceflight, I remember seeing news footage of rockets exploding at launch pads; there was tv news footage of experimental aircraft meeting their fate on the desert floor. Newspapers carried accounts of the last flights of test pilots. In 1967 a nation mourned the deaths of Apollo 1 astronauts, before they had even left the Earth. My own children would see news videos of horrific events that killed shuttle astronauts.

There is something in humans that makes us stare upwards and wonder in awe. We are not designed for space, and yet it is to space that we are drawn. And so we work to be able to live that reality. Some call it a foolish dream and question why. Fortunately enough humans do not call it a foolish dream but rather a response to the call of space.

Burt Rutan answered his call of flight, and Richard Branson answered his call of space. We will mourn this recent tragedy, learn from it, and someday look back on it as a tragic event from which we continued onward and upward. For we cannot help but passionately follow that call, for ourselves and for our children.

a reply to: crazyewok

And even they aren't 100% safe - all it takes is a bit of human error, or a malfunctioning part and even the most modern of ships can flounder.

In another forum post it was mentioned that the SS2 lacked ejection seats and that it happened too quickly for them to depressurize the cabin and manually egress via the escape hatch.

It appears that the most likely scenario is that the cabin disintegrated around them and threw the surviving pilot free.

Daily Mail Online has some decent images here.

Click on the images to view the original photos:

Fatal moment: The Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo plane is pictured above coming to pieces after a mid-air launch uses an experimental rocket fuel. It crashed to the ground in a remote region of California's Mojave Desert, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another

Fatal launch: SpaceShipTwo, left, is seen above moments after it detatched from WhiteKnightTwo, the twin-hulled airplane which carries the main vessel to 45,00ft before dropping it to make the sub-orbital space flight by itself

Pulling away: The rocket engine, using a new plastic-based polyamide fuel, can be seen starting to fire, right, as SpaceShipTwo streaks away from the carrier

Explosion: Fragments of the plane plummeted to earth after it started to break apart, white smoke pouring, in the fatal accident

Decline and fall: How the plane climbed tens of thousands of feet before exploding and plummeting to earth

SpaceShipTwo was flying under rocket power after being released from its mothership - then Virgin tweeted that it had 'experienced an in-flight anomaly.'

That back section looks a bit flimsy for rocket powered flight. Glider..??

a reply to: Soloprotocol

It's a lifting body, it only uses the rocket to get suborbital and glides the rest.

The pilot who died in the crash has been identified as Michael Alsbury, according to the L.A. Times. The injured pilot has yet to be identified.

SpaceShipTwo has four FAA approved pilots: Rick 'CJ' Sturckow, Michael Masucci, Todd 'Leif' Ericson and Peter Siebold. Chief pilot David Mackay could also have been flying.

Peter Siebold, who piloted SpaceShipTwo and survived, was alert and talking with his family and doctors Saturday, the statement said

Some background on Michael Alsbury

It looks like she exceeded tolerances and broke apart. I wonder if the new fuel was too much for the airframe.

a reply to: JadeStar

Correct...every nation that has launched space craft has had its share of disasters and failures.

Even ET craft crash a fair bit..apparently.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Like putting a V12 in a Mini Cooper (old, British style...not the huge new German ones)?

a reply to: MysterX

Lol, they do indeed and they don't even use explosive mixtures to fly about...Amateurs...

a reply to: stumason

Pretty much. Works well in thicker air, not so much in thinner.

Another possibility is an over correction based on the old fuel. They reacted like they did with it, and with the extra power it was too much.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Maybe the trick is to keep using the Rubber based fuel mix, but with the addition of SOME plastic into the mix, rather than a complete changeover to mostly plastic?

They knew it would provide more power, it seems it produced too much power...down mixing it with the original fuel ought to still give the extra power needed, but with greater stability maybe.