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Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson arrived in the Mojave Desert, California, to arrive at the crash site of the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft.
The jet spacecraft was completely destroyed on Friday morning during a test flight. One of the two test pilots hired by Scaled Composites died, and the co-pilot was taken to a local hospital.
A spokesman for Kern County told the Los Angeles Times that project engineer and test pilot Michael Alsbury was killed in an accident. Alsbury was 39 years old, and he worked with Scaled for 14 years. The co-pilot who was able to use the parachute is Peter Siebold.
"When checking the boundaries of human capabilities and technology, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yesterday we did not live up to expectations," Branson told reporters on Saturday. "Now we will comprehensively evaluate the results of the catastrophe and are determined to take positive moments from this in order to move forward together."
Alsbury was an experienced test pilot who had flown 1,800 hours of test flights. Together with Mark Stuckie, he was the co-pilot who conducted the first test flight of SpaceShipTwo in April 2013.
The loss of Alsbury was reflected in a small community of test pilots. “When such a tragedy occurs, we understand that our community is very small. We are all human and it hurts,” said Stewart Witt, general director of the Mojave air and space port on Friday. The SpaceShipTwo device is designed to carry 6 space tourists under the control of 2 pilots. Before the incident on Friday, the first flight was scheduled for next year. Undoubtedly, in connection with the incident, the first such flight will be postponed.
A team of researchers from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived at the crash site to assess what went wrong during a test flight. This is the first spacecraft, after the collapse of which, the NTSB took the lead in the investigation.
“For the first time, we will lead an investigation into the space flight incident,” said NTSB chairman Christopher Hart. "However, members of the NTSB team are hoping for help from members of the commission to investigate the tragedies of the Challenger and Columbia shuttles," he added.
As can be seen from the photographs taken by SpaceShipTwo shortly after it was undocked, it was the WhiteKnightTwo rocket during the test on Friday, an explosion occurred after the rocket engine of the apparatus was ignited. The spacecraft quickly collapsed, scattering debris over an area of 3 square miles across the desert. Kern County Department Sheriff fenced a wreck field for researchers to examine the wreckage.
Currently, all attention is focused on changing the formula of rocket fuel, which uses a hybrid engine SpaceShipTwo. In May, engineers decided to switch from a rubber-based propellant to a plastic-based propellant to optimize performance. Just the same on Friday for the first time used a new mixture. During a press conference after the accident on Friday, Kevin Mickey, president of Scaled Composites, stressed that thorough tests were conducted on the ground before the new formula was to be used directly in flight. “We used a rocket engine, which was thoroughly tested on the ground and passed a series of tests, so we did not expect any problems with the engine today,” he said in response to questions from journalists. “It was a new fuel formula that has been tested many times on the ground.”
Although spaceflight analysts view the engine as the root cause of what happened, we will have to wait for the first results of the NTSB investigation.
The SpaceShipTwo crash was the second commercial loss of spaceflight last week. On Tuesday, the Antares rocket of Orbital Sciences Corp. exploded shortly after launch. The rocket was supposed to deliver 2, 5 tons of provisions, equipment and materials for the experiment to the International Space Station under a $ 1, 9 billion contract with NASA. Currently under investigation incident.
Unfortunately, the incident with SpaceShipTwo killed one pilot and seriously hurt the second one.
