SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-crashes-during-flight-test-n238376

by llamataboot • 12 years ago

598 299 12 years ago

Most information seems to be on Twitter at the moment. Only official statement from Virgin is that the flight experienced an in-flight anomoly: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galact...

SEJeff• 12 years ago

https://twitter.com/hashtag/SS2?src=hash for reference

lutorm• 12 years ago

Nasaspaceflight.com has reports saying one pilot has been found alive and another didn't make it.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35117.270

What a terrible week. :(

rmason• 12 years ago

News reports cited that witnesses said they only saw a single chute. Very sad day indeed.

jwise0• 12 years ago

Looks like that thread has moved out of the general discussion thread:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35974.60

uptown• 12 years ago

This person is claiming to report from the scene: https://twitter.com/spacecom

sounds• 12 years ago

While I can't imagine how tragic this must be for the families of the pilots, I just want to say that one of the pilots has given his everything for this cause: that one day we will not be a one-planet species.

For that alone, all involved are heroes.

arjn2• 12 years ago

Totall agree. These people are the modern day seafarers. Heading out into unknown waters.

melling9• 12 years ago

Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly.

In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe.

Fuzzwah2• 12 years ago

From https://twitter.com/virgingalactic

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 SpaceShipTwo. WK2 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 ASAP.

cek• 12 years ago

Condolences to the friends and family of anyone who may have perished in this event.

While this is a major set-back and bummer, at the same time it is far better that something like this happen during a test than during a commercial flight. Whatever the design, manufacturing, or process issues are, they will now be sussed out reducing the chance of a failure later on.

I sincerely hope this is not such a huge set-back that it totally derails Virgin/Scaled's approach as I love the fact that we have competing commercial concepts working at the same time.

arjn2• 12 years ago

Its very sad but inevitable. At this cutting edge of technology and human endeavour, accidents are bound to happen.

sp332• 12 years ago

It's not inevitable, as evidenced by all the other accidents that have been... evited. You just don't hear about those. (Yes, evited is a word, it's just weird.)

sejje• 12 years ago

Maybe it's inevitable in the sense that all the accidents can't be evited.

Eventually you'll have one.

( Chrome doesn't think evited is a word. )

DubiousPusher• 12 years ago

I believe the OP here meant not that this specific incident was inevitable but rather that the death of a private astronaut at some point was statistically inevitable.

zepolud7• 12 years ago

It is demonstrably avoidable, there is zero need to risk human lives when doing testing these days. This is why Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser has the capability to land autonomously and is precisely why when it had an accident in 2013[1] nobody was hurt.

[1]http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1310/26dreamchaser/

Lambdanaut• 12 years ago

The ship came down in pieces and there's debris littering the ground. It's not sounding like they all made it.

https://twitter.com/spacecom

This is awful. I hope that problems like this don't result in more regulations and barriers to private spaceflight. It's about as dangerous of a job as they come and we have to expect companies will lose men. Every astronaut is a hero for humanity and progress.

dang• 12 years ago

Url changed from http://www.kerngoldenempire.com/news/local/story/d/story/spa... because this one seems to have more information. If there's a better url, we can change it again.

8_hours_ago• 12 years ago

Here's some background after reading a little bit of Wikipedia...

- Virgin Galactic has ordered a total of 5 SpaceShipTwos from the aptly named "The Spaceship Company".

- There are 2 built, the VSS (Virgin Space Ship) Enterprise and VSS Voyager.

- Only the VSS Enterprise has been flown, so I assume that is the ship which crashed today.

This is a sad day, indeed.

sp3000• 12 years ago

This is a pretty significant and sad setback.

Virgin Galactic was set up so eventually the average person can experience the wonder of space flight. The company didn't have Elon Musk type aspirations, but it is a big part of the process that will eventually allow us to colonize the stars.

These type of events show that even though we have the smartest scientific wizards in the world working on these things, there is still so much we have to learn, almost a half century after we landed people on the moon.

JanSolo5• 12 years ago

This is very bad. Not just for the family and friends of the poor guy who died, but for commercial manned spaceflight in general.

SpaceshipTwo is considered the 'simplest' and 'safest' of all the upcoming manned commercial vehicle. It has many features that should help keep it reliable. For example, instead of a real liquid rocket engine, it uses a hybrid engine; it has almost no moving parts apart from a valve or two. No turbopumps or gimbals or much mechanical stuff to go wrong. It only goes suborbital, so it does not need a heatshield because there's no re-entry. The landing system uses wings & wheels similar to any commercial jet. This stuff is mature and tested.

In fact, the only novel thing about SS2 is it's wing-feathering system. It's lets the craft to descend vertically still under the pilots control. I wonder if (and this is complete speculation) there was a problem restoring the wings to their 'atmospheric' flight position which prevented them from landing normally.

The consequences for commercial manned spaceflight will be quite severe, I think. I imagine that many Virgin Galactic customers will cancel their pre-orders. The flight test program is dead in it's tracks at this point; even those who don't cancel will be unlikely to fly for many more years while investigations and improvements are concluded. Other manned providers such as SpaceX and XCor will likely be extra cautious before allowing people to fly in their vehicles.

The image of manned commercial spaceflight will take a hit. If the 'Safest' of the commercial vehicles can crash before it even enters service, I worry that many potential customers will be put off. It never hurts to remember that Spaceflight is a dangerous business.

It's a sad day to top off a bad week in spaceflight. :(

nawitus2• 12 years ago

It's been reported that it "exploded in mid-air", and two parachutes were deployed, so the cause probably was not the wing-feathering system.

JanSolo5• 12 years ago

Yes, looking at the twitter feed, multiple sources state that it blew up. This means that either the tank (which takes up the whole rear half of the vehicle) failed catastrophically (unlikely; CF-wrapped tanks tend to develop hairline cracks which slowly leak out) OR the engine exploded.

What's interesting is that the SS2 engine fuel was swapped out very recently for a new thermoplastic polyamide solid fuel for better performace. Maybe this new fuel was not tested as well as it should have been?

cfreeman2• 12 years ago

They just switched to a new liquid powered engine because their hybrid engine was not powerful enough. This was the first powered test flight with their new engine, and given the information so far it sounds like it exploded in-flight. Very, very, tragic.

edit: I'm wrong. They simply switched to a new type of fuel for their hybrid engine.

Fuzzwah2• 12 years ago

I hadn't heard about that, thanks for the info.

I dug up this article:

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/10/08/work-continues-hybrid...

ggreer• 12 years ago

The engine has been the bane of SS2. The original rubber/N2O design was problematic enough that Virgin switched from rubber to a plastic. Apparently this was the first powered flight to use the new fuel.

While the design lacks complicated turbopumps and cryogenic fuels, it does have one drawback: the N2O is contained in a pressure vessel. If that tank is damaged while still full (or close to), bad things can happen.

JanSolo5• 12 years ago

Agreed.

Don't forget that this is not the first fatality associated with this engine. In 2007, 3 people were killed in an explosion during a static test at Mohave Air & Space port.

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

So they traded sometimes dangerous moving parts that could lead to a mission fail to a rarely dangerous pressurized vessel that would lead to casualties?

Is this a case of not seeing safety's big picture? Cutting accidents in half (or by whatever) is great, but not if that means the remaining accidents are fatal. A more frequent controlled failure is a much better scenario, but I imagine hurts the bottom line too much.

I'm wary that for-profit companies aren't going to invest enough in private manned spaceflight's safety when there's a profit incentive at work dictating otherwise. At least without a fair bit of regulation.

jobu• 12 years ago

Looking more into their design turns up all sorts of issues with nitrous oxide as a propellant. It's used all the time in dentist offices, so it's easy to misunderstand as an innocuous gas. At higher pressures and relatively normal temperatures it can go supercritical and become very, very volatile. At that point it's an even better solvent than supercritical CO2, and still a very strong oxidizer:

http://www.knightsarrow.com/rockets/scaled-composites-accide...

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a489459.pdf

(In that Air Force research lab report there's mention of supercritical N20 causing a spontaneous explosion with coffee grounds.)

krisoft2• 12 years ago

All of those you said are very true. It's also worth mentioning that that very 'safe' engine has already killed three people, and injured three others during a cold-flow test. Very tragic.

see for details: http://www.knightsarrow.com/rockets/scaled-composites-accide...

or the "Test program accident" at the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RocketMotorTwo

smackfu2• 12 years ago

Yeah, "rocket" + "safe enough to carry tourists regularly" just seems like a difficult combination.

JanSolo5• 12 years ago

You are right. Hybrid engines are not looking like the safe & reliable middle-ground between solid & liquid engines that they were made out to be.

HarryHirsch• 12 years ago

How do you even manage to kill not one but three people with shrapnel during a pressure test? Proper safety procedure demands that anything potentially shrapnel-producing is contained within an enclosure and that engineers are outside the area while testing takes place.

The whole incident indicates a lax safety culture.

notastartup• 12 years ago

sad. also manned flight to mars to colonize it like Musk says seems impossible for at least a couple decades.

javert• 12 years ago

The accidents this week seem to have no bearing on that.

It may or may not be true, but it's the same thing it was last week.

avmich• 12 years ago

SpaceshipTwo is considered the 'simplest' and 'safest' of all the upcoming manned commercial vehicle.

XCOR's culture of safety is pretty good, though it's the school of thought quite close to Virgin Galactic . At least rocket engines in XCOR are designed with the highest standards of safety.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

Well Soyuz still flies and has exceptionally low human fatality rates in the last decades. So if safetey realiability is desired it could be just "buy a ride on a Souyz" for now.

I think it won't be that dire. People who sign up to fly into space on a new design would probably be aware of the risks involved.

Many people still climb Everest, dive into caves, and jump from clifs with wingsuits. I think there won't be a shortage and the future is bright and exciting.

riffraff• 12 years ago

AFAIR there is an order of magnitude of two between the prospected prices of virgin galactic and a soyuz trip.

winslow2• 12 years ago

First image of the crash. Looks like one of the tail wings. Unfortunately it seems that one of the pilots did not make it.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1S-bKRCMAEOMsl.jpg:large

mixmax2• 12 years ago

What this weeks events show us is that space travel is hard. Really hard.

Most systems operate in extreme conditions, sometimes bordering on the improbable. Thousands, sometimes millions of horsepower in an engine smaller than a car, cryogenic liquids at -200 degrees celsius cooling a nozzle that is 3000 degrees celsius 5 millimeters away, heatshields designed to absorb obscene amounts of heat, the list just goes on and on.

Most people don't realize how hard this is. The physics, the engineering, the design.

Yet we have made great strides, especially over the last few years, and Virgin Galactic is a part of this. There is a new era of cheap spaceflight on the horizon, driven forward by fearless men and women that want to go to space no matter what the cost.

This is commendable, and is what drives the human race forward. Without these fearless men we wouldn't have gone to the moon. We wouldn't have explored the depths of the ocean. We wouldn't have flown the skies.

Today it appears we lost one of these fearless men, but he now rests in peace assured that others will take his place, that he was not alone in his longing to drive mankind forwards into the unknown, that his dreams live on to inspire others.

We have conquered the skies, and we will move on. Eventually we will conquer space and make it accessible to all mankind. A fearless man has given his life to allow us to some day leave the cradle that is mother Earth.

His ultimate sacrifice won't be in vain.

atlantic4• 12 years ago

This is commendable, and is what drives the human race forward. Without these fearless men we wouldn't have gone to the moon. We wouldn't have explored the depths of the ocean. We wouldn't have flown the skies.

That's one way of looking at the matter. Another is that without this untrammelled technological evolution (I hesitate to use the word "progress") we wouldn't be living through the greatest mass extinction event of the last few of million years. A lot of this effort could go instead into finding a better cohabitation between humans and the other species with whom we supposedly share the planet.

tomrod2• 12 years ago

Until when? The next large asteroid? The next close-by gamma burst? The sun goes nova?

Let's go see the universe, and take life along with us.

moskie• 12 years ago

Such an incredible false choice you present.

robertfw• 12 years ago

I think you'll find that it hard to argue that the efforts of exploration are linked to our industrial pillage of the planet.

mikeash• 12 years ago

Instead of living through the greatest mass extinction event in the last few million years, we'd be living in harmony with nature, dying of now-curable injuries, starving to death when times are lean, seeing our mothers and wives and daughters die in childbirth, and living in profound ignorance of the nature of the universe.

At least with the mass extinction there are prospects for fixing the problem.

nether2• 12 years ago

Kaczynski was right.

undersuit• 12 years ago

I think there are many other areas humanity could shift their focus away from to better help cohabitation of this planet than spaceflight.

revscat3• 12 years ago

You are getting downvoted, but I actually agree with you. Space travel is awesome, but so is living, and right now we are not living in a way that is sustainable over the short term. Space travel is, for me, an anachronistic hold-over from people who grew up with Heinlein, Asimov, etc., but is not something that is realistic given the environmental situation. Realistically, any vehicle that is dependent upon currently available propulsion systems is a waste of time.

Our resources would be better spent elsewhere. I know that this opinion is anathema on a tech-heavy site such as this one, but I must nevertheless express my respectful disagreement. It would be far, far more productive for the species to dedicate resources towards CO2 and CH4 reduction in the lower atmosphere.

vcjohnson• 12 years ago

A lot of this effort could go instead into finding a better cohabitation between humans and the other species with whom we supposedly share the planet.

This is a false dilemma. We have 7+ billion people on the planet. There is most certainly a significant amount of effort going towards the future you mentioned. They are not mutually exclusive (and are, most likely, going to be a product of each other)

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

You're forgetting how cool it would be for rich people to burn a couple hundred thousand to fly in space for two and a half hours. It's clearly the highest expression of the human spirit, and you're a hopeless hater cynic.

I wonder what the carbon footprint of space tourism is, and will be if it becomes cheaper and more popular? I feel guilty flying on a plane.

JabavuAdams8• 12 years ago

Boring.

tomrod2• 12 years ago

There was a comment earlier asking for a source that someone didn't make it.[0]

[0] News report: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/31/spaceshiptwo-...

nether2• 12 years ago

cryogenic liquids at -300 degrees celsius

Absolute zero is -273 °C.

mixmax2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the catch, it's updated now - stupid mistake...

jaredmcdonald• 12 years ago

now that is pushing boundaries

jcrites• 12 years ago

Most systems operate in extreme conditions, sometimes bordering on the improbable.

Indeed. Your statement reminds me of an insightful engineering article, "How Complex Systems Fail": http://www.ctlab.org/documents/How%20Complex%20Systems%20Fai... . A few relevant observations from the article that resonate with me:

1) Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems.
4) Complex systems contain changing mixtures of failures latent within them.
5) Complex systems run in degraded mode.
A corollary to the preceding point is that complex systems run as broken systems. The system continues to function because it contains so many redundancies and because people can make it function, despite the presence of many flaws. After accident reviews nearly always note that the system has a history of prior ‘proto-accidents’ that nearly generated catastrophe.
17) People continuously create safety.
Failure free operations are the result of activities of people who work to keep the system within the boundaries of tolerable performance. These activities are, for the most part, part of normal operations and superficially straightforward. But because system operations are never trouble free, human practitioner adaptations to changing conditions actually create safety from moment to moment.

larrys2• 12 years ago

The other thing to keep in mind with new complex systems is that they will inevitably go thorough a phase where things are discovered over time.

At the start "n" is small 1 flight, 5 flights etc. It's pretty much a given that there will be failures it's just a matter of when and how critical a failure. The failures would be loaded toward happening early on and then fixed so that one particular failure shouldn't happen again. Something else might of course.

As an aside this is similar to why large companies have really long involved legal contracts. They are large enoug,h and have run into enough problems, (or employ attorneys who have) that they've seen it all and done it all and know what they need to do to protect themselves because of the statistical chance that in their large operation a particular problem will appear.

In other words more likely that with a footprint as large as McDonalds there will be a customer that get's scalded by coffee and files a lawsuit than the local coffee shop on main street USA. More customers means more chances of some outlier even happening.

Florin_Andrei2• 12 years ago

Well, a rocket is a thing that:

1. contains a lot of energy

2. releases a considerable stream of energy at a controlled, steady rate

3. does that in a small system, while flying through the air.

It's a lot easier if you drop one requirement:

1 + 2 = coal-based power plant

1 + 3 = bomb

2 (sort of) + 3 = conventional airplane

All of the above have been done reliably. It's only when you put together all three conditions that you get a rocket, and that's when things get really, really difficult.

zallarak• 12 years ago

This is a tragedy and something to learn from. Being able to test this thoroughly without the presence of any human almost seems like a no-brainer to me.

marze10• 12 years ago

Some say this is an "inevitable" result of pushing boundaries. No. This is the result of a poorly managed program. What they are doing is much easier than the Apollo program, which was well managed and had no in-flight failures that resulted in loss of life, while accomplishing an infinitely harder task.

This is a tragedy, obviously. But the program is about six years behind schedule, been going for 10 years. The most stupid thing they've done is stay with an experimental rubber/nitrous hybrid engine this whole time, instead of switching to liquid/liquid engine, a well proven technology. I know first hand that groups with such engine expertise have approached Virgin and been turned down.

Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode. The pilots should have refused to fly until Virgin had 10 consecutive motor qualification tests at full duration, not ride on a ship with a half-baked motor that has seen constant modifications during the last year.

In the software development world, a "death march" in a program behind schedule does not result in loss of actual life, not so in manned spaceflight.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

Apollo program, which was well managed and had no in-flight failures that resulted in loss of life

The flaws in Apollo One were so severe the three crew died on the launchpad. Describing that tragedy as "no in-flight deaths" is accurate but misses some important information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

seanflyon7• 12 years ago

Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode.

Does this same concern apply to plastic-based fuel? It does seem like a terrible idea to have people in the rocket the first time you try a new fuel mixture.

"During the nine months since the previous rocket-powered test in January, Virgin Galactic switched SpaceShipTwo'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."

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

Some say this is an "inevitable" result of pushing boundaries. No. This is the result of a poorly managed program.

Some of the boundaries that are being pushed are how much oversight, how meticulous, etc you have to be. In other words, how well you have to manage the program, how tight a ship you keep.

Keeping a tight ship raises costs, and isn't the big emphasis of all this privatized space travel on reducing costs?

kashkhan5• 12 years ago

there's no need not in this day and age to have test pilots. If they use computers, they can debug the engine in flight conditions by running maybe ten times as many test flights.

Delays of months between flights are dangerous. Until you have a 1000-10,000 flights to build up operational data and envelope, this is a death trap causing unnecessary deaths.

termain8• 12 years ago

"The most stupid thing they've done is stay with an experimental rubber/nitrous hybrid engine this whole time, instead of switching to liquid/liquid engine, a well proven technology."

1. They didn't stay with rubber/nitrous.

2. Like the sort used on Antares?

"Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode."

But what you know is wrong, they weren't using rubber.

I think a good case can be made that they didn't do enough ground testing, but your post mixing disdain and falsity doesn't advance that case.

anentropic• 12 years ago

well, I don't think it can have been the rubber because it says in the article:

"During the nine months since the previous rocket-powered test in January, Virgin Galactic switched SpaceShipTwo's fuel mixture from a rubber-based compound to a plastic-based mix"

jacquesm4• 12 years ago

Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode.

Let's hope they won't ask you to run the inevitable investigation then.

abandonliberty2• 12 years ago

You are certainly very good at finding evidence to validate your prejudice.

prof_hobart• 12 years ago

Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode.

Can I ask how? What is in there that tells you that?

rbanffy• 12 years ago

The hybrid rocket they are using is simpler and cheaper than a liquid/liquid design would be.

I agree that, for all we know, it was the catastrophic failure of a rocket engine that was not tested enough that killed a pilot and that they should have tested the engine for much longer than they appear to have.

I imagine they switched to this design because it's supposed to be a better one.

TrevorJ4• 12 years ago

Even under the best circumstances, space travel is risky business. It may well be that this program didn't do all it should have done to mitigate those risks, but both facts can be true it's not mutually exclusive.

chris_wot4• 12 years ago

You seem to have some sort of inside knowledge none of the rest of us have? Seriously, to say that this is a poorly managed program is something you can't provide any concrete evidence of - there has been a tragedy, but you cannot say that it was poorly managed because you don't know.

In fact, you don't even know that rubber in the hybrid engine blocked the nozzle. You can't know that - you aren't part of the investigating team. And they don't even know yet.

stefanix• 12 years ago

Software development fuckups can be just as fatal as manned space flight. Software is actually the cause of many space flight accidents. To think of software as some isolated system that does not affect peoples' lives is absurd. It's critical in many areas and can fail with fatalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs

- radiation therapy machine kills 5 - clock drift in Patriot system caused 28 killed - Chinook helicopter killed 29 due to bug in engine control - Toyota's electronic throttle control system caused dozens of fatalities

JabavuAdams8• 12 years ago

This is two fatal accidents, so far. There was widespread speculation in the space community over Scaled Composite's seemingly blasé attitude to Nitrous Oxide, after their cold-flow test fatalities.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

It also shows that the crew capsule doesn't survive rapid dissassembly of the engine. Which is another thing to work on. Sad to see this so quickly on the heels of the Orbital failure.

jMyles• 12 years ago

We wouldn't have explored the depths of the ocean.

We mostly still haven't! I think ocean exploration is pretty exciting too.

Metapony• 12 years ago

I'm finding this whole thread interesting, but your comment is the inspirational one I'd hoped to find. Thanks.

ghostunit3• 12 years ago

I find this dogma of "Eventually we will conquer space and make it accessible to all mankind" dangerous in the extreme to the actual, all-too-present predicaments we have here on real Earth such as climate change, environment devastation, fossil fuels/minerals/water depletion and the accelerating destruction of the web of life that makes possible your even being able to breathe.

You are all prey to the "religion of progress".

Your dogma is that space travel is not only possible, but a given, something the universe has put somewhere for us to find and make ours.

Except that, basic hard laws such as the speed of light, the laws of thermodynamics, etc. say NO. And it's only your religious thinking that allows you to handwave all that with a "we always find a way".

For all we know, in this universe it may be impossible to bypass or even bend those laws. Yet, you're betting the future of the species on old Star Trek fantasies.

As you said, the conditions and difficulty for modern space travel are in the extreme and pushing all of our sciences to their limits. And for what? just to get to... the moon. I don't want to scare you, but if that seems far to you, see how much bigger the distance to anything else in the solar system is, nevermind anything outside it.

colordrops• 12 years ago

While we are off topic, this post is a fine example of "concern trolling".

seanflyon7• 12 years ago

basic hard laws such as the speed of light, the laws of thermodynamics, etc. say NO

This is not true. For travel within the solar system the speed of light is no more than a nuisance delaying communication. The laws of thermodynamics don't stop space travel. No one is saying "we always find a way" to do the impossible. We are saying "we always find a way" to do that thing that we already know how to do and have demonstrated lots of times, only this time we need to make it cheaper.

abandonliberty2• 12 years ago

We must never forget that progress, social or technical, is built on people dedicating or sacrificing their lives.

Wikipedia lists: 19 Test Pilots 18 Astronauts in spaceflight 11 Astronauts in training

The death tolls for social progress are vastly greater.

These people choose to dedicate and risk their lives drive us forward.

zepolud7• 12 years ago

Test pilots? In the 21st century?

I find it absolutely reckless and inexcusable to require live humans riding on a prototype rocket when you have all the processing power needed to automate/remote manage the vehicle literally in your pocket.

EDIT: To those downvoting, you should really check that all current spaceplanes have the capability to fly and land autonomously--Boeing X-37, Dream Chaser, even Buran was fully autonomous and that was 25 years ago. There is simply no excuse for Virgin for being sloppy.

nawitus2• 12 years ago

I find it absolutely reckless and inexcusable to require live humans riding on a prototype rocket when you have all the processing power needed to automate/remote manage the vehicle literally in your pocket.

I think people should make that decision themselves.

apr• 12 years ago

I think armchair quarterbacking is reckless and inexcusable. These people has been working on airplanes and space crafts for some time now and I would trust their judgment. Especially given that they put their own lives on the line.

zepolud7• 12 years ago

"These people" that designed the spaceplane didn't put their lives on the line, they put the lives of the pilots on the line. And I would trust the judgment of the engineers at Boeing, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Lockheed-Martin and the entire Soviet space program over theirs.

seanflyon7• 12 years ago

It looks like this was the first time they turned on the engine with a new fuel plastic base fuel. I don't understand why they had humans strapped in when testing an experimental fuel in an experimental rocket engine.

"During the nine months since the previous rocket-powered test in January, Virgin Galactic switched SpaceShipTwo's fuel mixture from a rubber-based compound to a plastic-based mix"

pwnna3• 12 years ago

They definitely tested the engines on the ground[1]. You have to give the engineers the benefit of the doubt, at the very least.

[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JBrl96U...

diminoten2• 12 years ago

At some point you need to put people in those ships, and at some point you need to put test people in ships you eventually want to put people into.

Where is the line?

organsnyder• 12 years ago

Of course it's easy to say this in hindsight, but I might draw that line somewhere around where you're trying out a new fuel for the first time.

thelucky41• 12 years ago

I dream of one day becoming a test pilot. Especially in ships during their developmental stages, unaccounted for situations will come up, and a human capable of assessing and managing these situations are necessary.

For each of the technologies involved with the X-37, et al., that technology required testing with a human-in-the-loop to act as the judge for if the control output made sense. It simply isn't feasible to begin testing your robot pilot without first testing it with a pilot there in the first place.

pwnna3• 12 years ago

The following is purely personal opinion. Feel free to disprove me.

I think at the moment, and into the foreseeable future, a human at the pilot seat for an experimental craft, where all sorts of unexpected scenarios could pop up, would be much better suited than an automated "test" pilot, given that sometimes you don't even necessarily have the correct parameters of your plane/rocket to program a successful autopilot.

Keep in mind that people at Virgin Galactic will have finite resources. Even if you can automate something that can access very unexpected situations and make a correct decision on what to do, the cost of doing that vs a test pilot is going to be much higher.

As far as I'm aware, aircraft autopilot systems do not perform well when unexpected mechanical failures occur and usually defer to humans by sounding alarms and such.

As for rockets, especially test ones, usually the automated system that makes a call when mechanical failures occur involves self destruct to prevent collateral damages.

ColinDabritz• 12 years ago

My thoughts are with the Virgin Galactic team. Spaceflight is difficult, dangerous, and I believe crucial to the future of humanity. Test piloting is always dangerous, more so with space vehicles, but that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking or impactful when you lose someone. I'm sure they will learn from this even as they mourn the loss.

Virgin Galactic, especially those you lost today, you have my deepest respect for Daring Greatly.

Flemlord• 12 years ago

I was lucky enough to attend the first public flight of SpaceShip One; it was one of the most inspirational things I've ever witnessed. Very sorry for the family of the pilot who died and generally everybody involved.

jack-r-abbit3• 12 years ago

With regular flight in regular airplanes being so common and safe these days, it is easy to forget the lives that were lost so many years ago when brave men and women were testing the new technology of the time. Always pushing for faster planes, longer flights, higher altitudes. Lives were lost every step of the way. But it got us here. Today. We can cross oceans in a matter of hours rather than days (weeks?). So we continue to push the limits. And lives are lost each step of the way. Will I ever reach space? It is possible... but not likely. But I see no reason why my children won't. And it will be all because brave men and women, like the man that died today, continued to push the limits.

DiabloD3• 12 years ago

Can we get a black border on HN for this?

Icybee• 12 years ago

What crashed?

The mother plane part, or the spacecraft part?

jacquesm4• 12 years ago

The spacecraft part.

boxcardavin• 12 years ago

This highlights how important crew escape systems are. The issue isn't just crew survival, but also the effect that loss of crew has on the program. If crew loss is a real danger, it will happen, and after it does the PR often kills the public will to press on.

denom• 12 years ago

China launches 3 rockets in one week[1]. Russia launches a resupply of the International Space Station, ready to fly just 9 hours after yet another space vehicle crashes here[2].

Say what you want about "cheap spaceflight", there is something dysfunctional going on here. This latest disaster makes me wonder if the US even has a current capability of space flight. Pinching a few pennies isn't worth it.

[1] http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/27/china-launches-third-sp...

[2] http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/29/russians-launch-progres...

Aaronontheweb• 12 years ago

Innovation can't happen without risk - it's a damn shame that pilots lost their lives in this, but it's an inevitability in the course of human progress. Best we can do is learn from the mistakes that happened here and try again.

sparkzilla• 12 years ago

Yet another disaster for Branson: http://newslines.org/richard-branson/

larrydag• 12 years ago

This reminds of studying the Space Shuttle Challenger as part of my Engineering training at school. We studied it as part of an ethics in engineering lesson. The Space Shuttle labels certain components as "Criticality 1". A Criticality 1 component means there is no back up system and failure can lead to catastrophic consequences during Space Shuttle operation, especially at launch. As you may guess the O-rings on the Space Shuttle rocket boosters were graded as Criticality 1. The Space Shuttle had over 700 components graded as Criticality 1.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-03-18/news/860120045...

Space vehicles and space exploration is a very dangerous and high risk endeavor. This week we are unfortunately reminded of this fact. Thoughts go out to the families of the brave pilots and those with the Virgin Galactic program.

adamfeldman• 12 years ago

This is a time when you re-read Gene Kranz's famous speech to the flight control division after the Apollo 1 fire.

Gene Kranz is the gentleman sitting in the flight director's chair in the Apollo 13 movie, wearing the white vest. He helped create the Mission Control organization at NASA.

"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work.

Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, ‘Dammit, stop!’ I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.

When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."

Video re-enactment by Gene Kranz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjAteaK9lM

badname• 12 years ago

...and then it was Enterprise, Atlantis etc. No matter how tough and competent the organization is, failures cannot be eliminated when we are talking about so complex systems/operations.

htormey• 12 years ago

I am really sad to hear about this crash. In case anyone is interested in the technology behind SpaceshipTwo here is a brilliant documentary about Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites and the development of SpaceshipOne:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz8wlcUPz90

The documentary includes a very touching interview with a test pilot.

whitehat2k9• 12 years ago

Another symptom of the United States' inability to compete in STEM.

Cookingboy• 12 years ago

Yes, because private space flight industry is thriving with success in all the other countries, right...RIGHT?

rainmaking• 12 years ago

I'm not an expert, merely curious, but didn't Tesla do a test firing for their engine for the unmanned rocket? Couldn't they have done so too?

chatman• 12 years ago

Outsource all this to India / ISRO.

chrisweekly• 12 years ago

Tangent: I think it's safe to say that HN -- on this thread in particular -- is populated by many people who are deeply interested in space travel.

I'd like to recommend everyone select as their next book for pleasure reading Andy Weir's "The Martian".

Here's my GoodReads review:

It's not high-brow literature by any stretch. But it's not about the writing per se, it's about the story. I challenge anyone to read it without caring what happens to the protagonist. I recognize that he (and perhaps by extension the author?) may be borderline juvenile on a few occasions... but for me it hardly detracted from the reading experience. On the contrary, I was sufficiently immersed in being on Mars in the shoes of this bold and lonely astronaut that the book per se disappeared nearly the entire time I read it. Pausing to re-read a noteworthy turn of phrase or analyzing it as literature might well have detracted from the author's intent. The story is the thing. For me, the writing got out of the way. And I'm glad it did. This is an extremely well-researched, gripping, exciting page-turner. If you are remotely interested in space travel, imho it's a must-read.

reddog• 12 years ago

It's a shame that somebody had to die just so billionaires could one day take vanity space flights.

sirrocco• 12 years ago

Oh bullshit ! Everything is at first expensive but eventually reaches down to the masses.

vacri2• 12 years ago

Being a test pilot for an experimental airborne craft isn't the kind of job that people get coerced into doing.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

The question is : Why don't they use an unnamed vehicle for testing new fuels?

In lots of ways unmanned is actually simpler than maned, as the US army knows.

Using pilots for testing new things looks to me as extremely outdated, from the old macho days.

In the old macho days you had to sacrifice people for learning things as simple as how to control the aircraft over the speed of sound.

But today it is totally unnecessary.

NoNonsense• 12 years ago

test

GhostCursor• 12 years ago

Software needs to up its game. Systems should have prevented the requested parameters.

Jet fighters do the same thing: convert control to the flight systems within an envelope.

Both incidents seem to involve ignition, so that seems to be an issue.

SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

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