Billionaire Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, saluting the bravery of test pilots, vowed Saturday to find out what caused the crash of his prototype space tourism rocket, killing one crew member and injuring another.
In grim remarks at the Mojave Air and Space Port where the craft was under development, Branson gave no details of Friday’s accident and deferred to the federal National Transportation Safety Board, whose team had just arrived.
‘We are determined to find out what went wrong,” he said, asserting that safety has always been the top priority of the program that envisions taking wealthy tourists to the edge of space for a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth below.
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“Yesterday we fell short,” he said. “We’ll now comprehensively assess the results of the crash and are determined to learn from this and move forward.”
Branson added, however, that “we are not going to push on blindly.”
The pilot killed in the crash was identified as 39-year-old Michael Alsbury, The Los Angeles Times reported citing a Kern’s County coroner’s office spokeswoman.
More than a dozen investigators in a range of specialties were forming teams to examine the crash site, collect data and interview witnesses, NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart told a press conference at Mojave Air and Space Port, where the winged spacecraft was under development.
Hart said the investigation will have similarities to a typical NTSB probe as well as some differences.
“This will be the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch (accident) that involved persons onboard,” said Hart, noting that the NTSB did participate in investigations of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.
Hart said he did not immediately know the answers to such questions as whether the spaceship had flight recorders or the altitude of the accident, but noted that test flights are usually well documented.
Supply rocket also exploded
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo blew apart about 32 kilometres from the Mojave airfield after being released from a carrier aircraft Friday. It was the second fiery setback for commercial space travel in less than a week. On Tuesday, an unmanned Orbital Sciences Antares commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff from a launch site in Virginia.
Branson has been the front-runner in the fledgling race to give large numbers of paying civilians a suborbital ride.
The NTSB investigators were expected to head to an area about32 kilometres from the Mojave airfield where debris from the spaceship fell over a wide area of uninhabited desert.
The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the plane breaking apart.
Alsbury was found dead inside the spacecraft and another pilot parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.
The accident occurred just as it seemed commercial space flights were near, after a period of development that lasted far longer than hundreds of prospective passengers had expected.
‘A real setback’
Branson once envisioned operating flights by 2007. Last month, he talked about the first flight being next spring with his son.
“It’s a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space any time soon,” said John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University.
Friday’s flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rockets fire after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mothership or functioned as a glider after release.
At 18 metres long, SpaceShipTwo featured two large windows for each of up to six passengers, one on the side and one overhead.
The accident’s cause was not immediately known, nor was the altitude at which the blast occurred. The first rocket-powered test flight peaked at about 16 kilometres above Earth. Commercial flights would go 100 kilometres or higher.
The problem happened about 50 minutes after takeoff and within minutes of the spaceship’s release from its mothership, said Stuart Witt, CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Virgin Galactic — owned by Branson’s Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS of Abu Dhabi — sells seats on each prospective journey for $250,000. The company says that “future astronauts,” as it calls customers, include Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand. The company reports receiving $90 million from about 700 prospective passengers.
Ken Baxter was one of those who had signed up to be among the first to make the flight.
Despite the disaster, Las Vegas resident Baxter said he was confident that the flight will happen one day.
“It’s very sad for the test pilots, but I’m ready to go into space with Richard Branson,” he said.
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