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I took this during my visit to them at the Mojave Space Port earlier this month. Sir Richard Branson: “Space is hard – but worth it. We will persevere and move forward together.”
11 responses to “Last sight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo”
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SpaceShipTwo drops off the wing of WhiteKnightTwo and ignites
Burning the new plastic propellant they were excited about, for the first time in flight: 
It then disintegrates 12 seconds after ignition (based on camera frame rate; not clear yet whether this is a motor failure or an airframe failure, perhaps from novel thrust dynamics):
The unfortunate end of N339SS 
Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said it best: "Space is hard and today was a tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today. We’re going to get through it. The future rests in many ways on hard days like this, but we believe we owe it to the team, that has been working so hard on this endeavour, to understand this and to move forward. And that is what we’ll do.”And from last year, under construction… May she rest in peace
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I’m usually a hardened realist but the events of this week have triggered a thought in my head that can best be described as a "silver lining:"
There were two accidents/failures of civilian/commercial space projects this week. That looks bad on first glace but, keep in mind, failure in technical endeavor usually means that the "edge of the envelope" is being pushed.
With a risk-averse NASA not even having a manned vehicle at this point I think it is clear that these civilian guys are working harder than NASA. In the final analysis… that can probably be called progress.
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[https://www.flickr.com/photos/lyonsnate] — In the forward to a book on SpaceShipOne, Sir Arthur Clarke wrote:
“Space travel is returning to where it started: with maverick pioneers dreaming of journeys to orbit and beyond, some carrying out rocket experiments in their own backyards. The rise of citizen astronauts has already begun.”
This was 2007, months before he died, and before SpaceX had a successful flight.
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Tragic setback. Hopefully, the root cause will be isolated, corrected, and they get back on course. While the suspicion is understandable, I wouldn’t be too quick to blame the new fuel just yet.
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[https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson] That’s what I’m talking about! We live in a time when rich civilians can go into space. In the 1920’s only rich civilians could fly in airplanes. 90 yrs later, air-travel is a thing universally complained about by commuters. Based on that fact, I expect that I will fly into space before I die. I may live long enough to even complain about it!
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Yes! In that same article, Clarke wrote:
“Escaping from Earth will not always be astronomically expensive… This will come… most important of all, through the development of reusable boosters, which can be flown for hundreds of missions, like normal aircraft.”
He then discloses that he wrote those words in July 1969, as Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon, yet nobody has taken on the challenge with liquid boosters, until now (with the SpaceX Falcon 9 1.1).
I also find it somewhat surreal that on the same day as the Virgin Galactic crash, 3x as many people died in a a fiery crash of a flight simulator in Kansas. That’s not a typo; they died in an indoor airplane flight simulator: news
Oh, and I am reminded of the introduction that CEO Stu Witt gave us in 2013:
"The Mojave Air & Space Port grants permission. This is the one place you can get permission to kill yourself and your team."
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P.S. I like the interesting approach the European Space Agency has taken to evangelize their mission… Their Ambition Video is worth expanding to full screen and 1080p
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The latest, from Aviation Week (Note the 11 second time to failure): "The NTSB-led investigation team probing the cause of the Oct. 31 crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo says 2 sec. before beginning to break up in midair, the vehicle’s two moveable tail booms unexpectedly began to deploy into a "feathering" position.
Revealing the findings, NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart says camera footage and telemetry show that around 9 sec. after ignition of the hybrid rocket, the mechanism that controls the stowage of the moving tails moved from "lock" to "unlock."
The NTSB also reports that the fuel and oxidizer tanks as well as the hybrid rocket motor were all intact and showed no signs of burn through or of "being breached." The findings support photographic evidence of the mishap which clearly indicated a successful ignition and continuing rocket burn before the catastrophic structural breakup.
The flight was the fourth powered test of SS2 and the first to use a new plastic-based fuel aimed at a more powerful, smoother acceleration. While the switch to the new fuel led to speculation that this would form the initial focus for the investigation, the latest findings now indicate the inquiry will shift to the inadvertent deployment of the feathering mechanism and the impact of excessive aerodynamic loads on the structure."
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> That’s not a typo; they died in an indoor airplane flight
> simulator"Three people in a flight simulator have died after a real plane crashed into the building…"
That is one incredibly realistic simulator! Maybe they should just stick to sensurround.
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