The worst accident to hit the nascent private space sector occurred on Friday, October 31, 2014, after Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed in the Mojave Desert killing one of its two test pilots. The vehicle, which was testing a new fuel mixture in preparation for its January 2015 debut, took off at 9:20 am PDT and separated from its “mothership,” WhiteKnightTwo at around 10:10 am. Two minutes later, an anomaly occurred that caused SpaceShipTwo to break apart.
The two pilots – Peter Siebold and Michael Alsbury – eject from the collapsing craft in time, but only Siebold survived the downward descent with serious injuries. Both crew members were employees of Scaled Composites, a company contracted by Virgin Galactic to operate the tests.
Witnesses told the Associated Press that an explosion was sighted shortly after SpaceShipTwo ignited its engines. But, these accounts differ from those of Mojave Air and Space Port chief executive Stuart Witt, who, when speaking at the press conference, explained that he saw no explosion.
The cause of the spacecraft’s failure remains under investigation, but sources speculate that the redesigned hybrid-fuel rocket had not undergone sufficient ground testing prior to its powered flight. Similarly, new modifications made to the SpaceShipTwo’s chassis to accommodate the new engine may have also introduced new vulnerabilities to the craft.
This flight marks Virgin Galactic’s fourth rocket engine-powered test flight ever. Had this mission been a success, Virgin founder Richard Branson would’ve boarded the next flight, and paying customers following suite.
“This just shows that you need to test fly these things more than two or three times before you start taking up paid customers,” Marco Caceres, a space industry analyst at the Teal Group Corporation told me. “Thing is, these flights are very expensive and most governments and companies can't afford more than a few test flights.”
As Motherboard’s Jason Koebler points out, the issue isn’t that Branson’s taking consumers into space, but that he’s electing to use an unfinished technology, thereby, placing the risk of testing that technology into the hands of the consumers themselves. Virgin Galactic has been selling tickets for commercial space flights for the last 15 years, having sold approximately 700 seats at around $250,000 a pop.
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