Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crashes, 1 dead

Story

One person died and another was injured Friday when Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo test flight failed following what the company described as a "serious anomaly."

The incident occurred over the Mojave Desert shortly after SpaceShipTwo separated from WhiteKnightTwo, the vehicle designed to carry it aloft, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

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What a horrible, horrible week for the commercial space industry. Thoughts to the families of those killed and injured.

Terrible.

Unfortunate, yes. But there were disasters in the Apollo era, in the Shuttle era and there was inevitably going to be at least one in the private sector. It is the cost of the pursuit of space flight, and shouldn't be viewed a deterrent.

Pisses me off to no end that national media jumps all over these stories, yet completely fucking ignore all the past successes.

@SaintLeonidas

They've been pretty good about reporting the successes. They let us know when the Dragon capsules both launched and arrived at the ISS, for instance.

The real kick to the balls here (besides the tragedy of the loss of life, of course) is two incidents occurring in the same week. Yes that's the price of getting to space, but it still doesn't look good.

Jeez. Bad week for spaceflight.

hmmm...it would be settling we'll eventaully find out what exactly happened.

Hope that one dude makes it.

As terrible as this has all been, I'm just glad it happened now and not when tourists were on that damned thing (wasn't Virgin Galactic supposed to be starting commercial flights next year?). You think it's bad press now...

It's kind of naive to assume no tourists will ever die while going on a spaceflight.

I'm just glad they aren't using dogs anymore knowing off-hand they will die.

I like dogs. American tourists, not so much.

that's a terrible shame.

and it is going to happen again and again and again.

but you keep on going because we are doomed to extinction unless we get off this rock and establish a colony somewhere else in the solar system.

and yes it would be nice to have our governments assume all the risk but our politicians are more interested in petty personal power and anonymous public restroom sex to get the job done so it looks like it is up to private corporations.

Charging someone $250,000 a seat for a few minutes is a pretty good business model.