By Curtis Thompson
In what has been a difficult week (click here) for private space companies, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo exploded and crashed during a test flight in Mojave, California on Friday.
SpaceShipTwo, a private suborbital spaceplane designed for space tourism, was conducting its fourth powered flight test over the Mojave Desert when, according to Virgin Galactic, “the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle,” The explosion occurred shortly after SpaceShipTwo separated from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft....
Private industry always believes it can do it better and cheaper than the government. Right.
The Virgin Galactica ship took clues from the Space Shuttle. It was a ship within a ship. Big ungainly on the ground the vehicle would take the shuttle vehicle aloft and then released it. The US Space Shuttle was launched on large booster rockets, but, was transported by a jumbo jet between it's landing point and the hanger that it would be serviced. It was somewhat unclear about heat tiles and the like on any of these vehicles, but, one has to assume the shuttle would have some degree of re-entry capacity.
Sympathies to the family and friends of the lost test pilot and hopes for the recovery of the other.
