
SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight - llamataboot
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-crashes-during-flight-test-n238376
======
mixmax
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.

~~~
marze
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.

~~~
kashkhan
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.

~~~
neurotech1
Your forgetting the countless times that a test pilot has saved the
aircraft/spacecraft from destruction. If it was unmanned and flown by
computer, it would have been a fireball.

At least one shuttle flight would have been lost if the crew didn't fly
manually to correct for a malfunction. STS-4 PIO'd on landing and would have
crashed if auto-stabilization wasn't overridden by the pilot.

~~~
robryk
According to wikipedia, it was STS-3 that had (autoopilot-induced)
oscillations during landing. The description on Wikipedia seems to imply that
they were expected (the autopilot was being tested) and that the dangerous
condition was due to the autopilot being left partially engaged after the
test.

~~~
neurotech1
Correct. There was also an pitch stabilization system that malfunctioned due
to the misconfigured (partially engaged) autopilot. Point remains that the
pilots flying skills in the cockpit saved the orbiter.

~~~
sitkack
And in this case the craft killed the pilot. Shouldn't we be designing
pilotless craft?

------
JanSolo
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. :(

~~~
krisoft
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...](http://www.knightsarrow.com/rockets/scaled-composites-accident/)

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

~~~
HarryHirsch
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.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Precisely. An absence of proper safety procedures is how.

------
adamfeldman
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjAteaK9lM)

~~~
badname
...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.

------
sounds
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.

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

~~~
melling
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its sad, sure. Sorry for their loss.

But people take far greater risks for far less reason. Monster Truck rallys.
Motorcycle racing. Skiing. We don't change national priorities every time
somebody dies at those activities.

SO lets keep it in perspective, and salute the brave folks who are trying to
expand human boundaries.

~~~
slg
Those aren't really fair comparisons as they are several orders of magnitudes
less dangerous than space flight. My quick estimates say that roughly 1-3% of
people who try to get to space die during some point of the journey. Some
quick Googling put the fatality rate for skiing at roughly .00002%. If 1% of
people who tried skiing died, you could bet there would be national
discussions about it.

~~~
Turing_Machine
About 0.4% of people working in the Alaska crab fishery die on the job, and
people seem to be relatively okay with that. And it's much, much better than
it was years ago. I know people who were crabbers in the 80s --- stories that
would curl your hair (or straighten it, if it's already curly).

[http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/13/pf/dangerousjobs/index.htm](http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/13/pf/dangerousjobs/index.htm)

~~~
melling
I think you're kind of missing the point. The Alaska crab program doesn't come
to a complete stop for a couple years while there's an investigation and an
attempt to make it safer. It won't be on the cover of the NYT. You don't need
to go to Congress and request an additional $1.7 billion for another ship.

We are moving into Space at a snail's pace because we keep insisting on
spending lots of money to try and send humans there "safely", and that's not
really working out so well for us.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"x The Alaska crab program doesn't come to a complete stop for a couple years
while there's an investigation"

Neither will Virgin Galactic.

"You don't need to go to Congress and request an additional $1.7 billion for
another ship."

Neither does Richard Branson.

~~~
melling
Perhaps, you haven't noticed but I'm using this accident to discuss our
national space program. Virgin Galactic has a plane that goes to 62
miles/100km. While this is great, in the short-term, it doesn't help our space
program.

Btw, you don't think they need to revisit safety to assure their customers
that it's not a one way trip? Do they even have a second plane? There's not a
chance that there will be a commercial flight carrying paying customers within
the next 2 years. Branson was saying this year just a month ago.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"Btw, you don't think they need to revisit safety to assure their customers
that it's not a one way trip?"

Not from what I'm seeing. No one is planning to cancel their reservation. I
wouldn't, if I had one.

~~~
melling
Ok, let's revisit in 2 years to evaluate the setback this event turned out to
be. Perhaps I'm overstating it.

By the way, the spacecraft cost $500 million.

[http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/31/technology/virgin-
galactic-s...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/31/technology/virgin-galactic-
spaceship-crash/index.html?iid=HP_LN)

------
zepolud
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.

~~~
apr
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.

~~~
zepolud
"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.

~~~
winslow
Really... You are going to trust the entire Soviet space program compared to
the engineers behind this project? I really don't think they were being
reckless with having pilots. Ultimately, their plan was to take other patrons
up to space. You will need personal (experienced space flight attendants)
while conducting the flight. This is obviously tragic and my thoughts go out
to the families affected. However, when you are trying to do something as
complex as space travel and leaving earth you will unfortunately have mishaps
and deaths.

Please have a look here -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Incidents....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Incidents.2C_failures.2C_and_setbacks)

~~~
gohrt
So the pilot died in order to make Richard Branson's space tourists have a
safer and more enjoyable weekend. Cool.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The pilot died trying to make a cheap, reusable orbiter a reality. The
tourists are there to help pay for it.

~~~
zepolud
It's not even that; it's suborbital.

~~~
pwnna
Gotta establish a suborbital trajectory to reach orbit, though.

One step at a time.

------
lutorm
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](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35117.270)

What a terrible week. :(

~~~
jwise0
Looks like that thread has moved out of the general discussion thread:

[http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35974.60](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35974.60)

------
uptown
This person is claiming to report from the scene:
[https://twitter.com/spacecom](https://twitter.com/spacecom)

------
8_hours_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.

------
cek
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.

------
Fuzzwah
From [https://twitter.com/virgingalactic](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.

------
Lambdanaut
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](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.

------
chrisweekly
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.

------
llamataboot
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...](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galactics-
spaceshiptwo-suffers-flight-anomaly-n238376)

~~~
SEJeff
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/SS2?src=hash](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SS2?src=hash)
for reference

------
larrydag
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...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-03-18/news/8601200450_1_o-
ring-seals-nasa-officials-shuttle-components)

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.

------
denom
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...](http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/27/china-launches-third-space-
mission-in-a-week/)

[2] [http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/29/russians-launch-
progres...](http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/29/russians-launch-progress-
supply-ship-to-space-station/)

------
jack-r-abbit
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.

------
winslow
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](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1S-bKRCMAEOMsl.jpg:large)

------
Flemlord
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.

------
DiabloD3
Can we get a black border on HN for this?

------
sp3000
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.

------
ColinDabritz
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.

------
htormey
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz8wlcUPz90)

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

------
Htsthbjig
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.

------
boxcardavin
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.

------
Aaronontheweb
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
Yet another disaster for Branson: [http://newslines.org/richard-
branson/](http://newslines.org/richard-branson/)

------
rainmaking
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?

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

~~~
sp332
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.)

~~~
DubiousPusher
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.

~~~
joshstrange
As zepolud said elsewhere in this thread:

> 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.

The point being there shouldn't have been human pilots in those seats in the
first place.

------
Icybee
What crashed?

The mother plane part, or the spacecraft part?

~~~
jacquesm
The spacecraft part.

------
GhostCursor
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.

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

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

------
chatman
Outsource all this to India / ISRO.

------
dang
Url changed from
[http://www.kerngoldenempire.com/news/local/story/d/story/spa...](http://www.kerngoldenempire.com/news/local/story/d/story/spaceshiptwo-
crashes-shortly-after-mojave-test-fli/11401/64VdLqg21EWpK1vuptvTsg) because
this one seems to have more information. If there's a better url, we can
change it again.

------
NoNonsense
test

------
whitehat2k9
Another symptom of the United States' inability to compete in STEM.

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

