WASHINGTON — Fiery failures are no stranger to the space game. It’s what happens when you push the boundaries of what technology can do and where people can go. And it happened to Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.
Three days after a private unmanned rocket taking cargo to the International Space Station blew up six seconds into its flight, a test flight of SpaceShipTwo exploded Friday over the Mojave Desert with two people on board.
The developments reignited the debate about the role of business in space and whether it is or ever will be safe enough for everyday people looking for an expensive 50-mile-high thrill ride.
“It’s a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space anytime soon,” said John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University. “There were a lot of people who believed that the technology to carry people is safely at hand.”
The question for space tourism might be “if it survives,” Logsdon said. But he thinks its momentum in recent years will keep it alive.
Federal estimates of the commercial space industry exceed $200 billion. NASA is counting on private companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to haul cargo to the space station.
Internet pioneers Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have gotten into the space game. Aviation entrepreneur Richard Branson and others push a space tourism industry.
Some experts said they worry that private industry might not be as safe as the government when it comes to going into space.
Jerry Linenger, a former astronaut who narrowly survived a 1997 fire on the Russian space station Mir, said private industry lacks the experience and the advocates for safety that NASA had.
Watching the Orbital Sciences accident Tuesday, Linenger said, “it was blatantly obvious that it is a dangerous operation that is very nearly on the edge,” yet private companies talk of doing it better, faster and cheaper. Then they find out that was naive, he said.
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Billionaire Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson vowed Saturday to find out what caused the crash of his prototype space tourism rocket, killing one crew member, but sounded a cautious note about any move to quickly push the project forward.
“We are determined to find out what went wrong,” he said, asserting that safety is the top priority.
The pilot killed in the test flight was identified Saturday as Michael Tyner Alsbury, 39, of nearby Tehachapi. The surviving pilot is Peter Siebold, 43, who parachuted to safety and was hospitalized. Both worked for Scaled Composites, the company developing the spaceship for Virgin Galactic.
— The Associated Press
