Virgin Galactic explodes

[Fox Mike]

Just happened.
http://news.yahoo.com/virgin-galactic-spaceship-flight-problem-181618501.html

 

[Tweety Bird]

Bad day for - and prayers sent to - the crew and their families, Richard Branson, Burt Rutan, Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.

We watched a video of this ship not long ago right here on RF:

http://www.rugerforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=211997&p=2119644&hilit=virgin+galactic#p2119644

 

[bobski]

anomoly my eye. the thing blew up.

just a fancy way of saying we screwed up.

 

[Colonialgirl]

anomoly my eye. the thing blew up.

just a fancy way of saying we screwed up.

Sure and some 707's , 727's, 737's, L1011's, DC-10's, Airbuses and 747's crashed AFTER they were supposedly certified to fly. Stuff happens. How many Saturn V's blew up and should we mention a COUPLE of space shuttles.

Just remembered; Didn't the old Pan Am sea planes use to land regularly with an engine missing or NOT running?

 

[Jeepnik]

Hmm, I guess right now SpaceX is in the forefront of civilian space travel.

I just hope that this doesn't stop Virgin from going ahead. They have some pretty good ideas.

 

[Tweety Bird]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29857182

A couple of Saturns exploded during test but the Saturn/Apollo never killed anyone in flight.

As Pam said, sometimes stuff happens. When Challenger exploded, the PAO said there had been an "anomaly". That's just technical speak for "something out of the ordinary has happened". Sometimes it's worse than others.

This is a bad deal for Virgin Galactic. I hope they can recover from this.

I heard one report yesterday that they were experimenting with a new fuel for this thing, but haven't heard that since. Its performance had not been meeting expectations so they were probably trying to get more energy into the operation.

 

[Rick Courtright]

This is a bad deal for Virgin Galactic. I hope they can recover from this.

Hi,

I first heard this as a quick blip from the crash site on the news this afternoon. Sir Richard was there, and ABC reports "Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson vowed today that the crash would not be the end of the company's effort, and said that by finding out what caused the disaster they would 'honor the bravery' of the pilots."

Branson is not a fellow who takes "no" for an answer, and was further quoted: "In testing the boundaries of human capabilities and technologies, we are standing on the shoulders of giants," he said. "Yesterday, we fell short." He went on to talk about continuing the project.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/billion-spacecraft-mogul-sir-richard-branson-admits-fell/story?id=26624324

It sounds like the investigation could take a year, but I'm confident Virgin Galactic will carry on. This flight was reported to have been the 55th flight of SpaceShipTwo, so it's hard to even begin to guess what happened...

Rick C

 

[Tweety Bird]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29876154

Hmmmm. If the "feathering" system actuated prematurely, that could explain a lot. Interesting, as always, when a Scaled Composites ship is the story, good or bad.

 

[No-1]

Knew a guy who worked for them a few years ago when one of their engines blew up on the ground. he spent a week in the hospital and it killed a couple other workers.