Space Station Live: Nutrition in Space
NASA Commentator Lori Meggs at the Marshall Space Flight Center speaks with Scott Smith, a nutritional biochemist at the Johnson Space Center, about his Nutrition study on the International...
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Taylor Swift sends Christmas presents to Prattville woman Taylor Swift sends Christmas presents to Prattville woman
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Police in Paris said they know the names of three men who killed 12 people and wounded 11 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, but the manhunt is still underway.
Police in Paris said they know the names of three men who killed 12 people and wounded 11 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, but the manhunt is still underway.
Monday night, many of you said "Goodness, gracious," to great balls of fire in the evening skies.
You might have seen one of two fireballs, an especially hot and bright type of meteoroid, flying across the sky.
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Fail Highlight: How Hard Can It Be | Waldo Plays Kerbal Space Program [LIVE]
For the maiden flight of the Waldo Space Program (WaSA) we set ourselves the lofty goal of reaching 5000 metres of altitude. Of course, Waldo being lead designer on spacecraft is a bad idea....
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Fail Highlight: How Hard Can It Be | Waldo Plays Kerbal Space Program [LIVE] - Video
The mission patch for SpaceX's fifth operational space station resupply flight, a mission that will feature an unprecedented attempt to autonomously land the first stage of the Falcon 9 booster on a remotely-operated barge stationed east of Jacksonville. The test is a major step in the company's long-range plans to reduce launch costs by recovering and reusing rocket hardware. SpaceX
Last Updated Jan 6, 2015 6:36 AM EST
SpaceX engineers made final preparations Monday for the planned Tuesday launch of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with more than 5,200 pounds of supplies, equipment and science gear bound for the International Space Station. But the launch attempt was aborted shortly before the scheduled liftoff.
The next target time is Friday at 9 a.m. EST.
The company was also going to attempt to land the booster's first stage on an off-shore barge, a key element in founder Elon Musk's long-range plans to lower costs by recovering, refurbishing and re-flying rocket hardware.
"We are extremely interested in the success of this flight in terms of getting cargo to the ISS," station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said. "But as an agency, we're also extremely proud of our affiliation with SpaceX and very excited about the steps they take to further spaceflight in general and reduce the cost."
Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX, stressed that while the landing test was an important goal for the company's long-range plans, "the main mission is absolutely to get cargo to the station and to make sure the station's supply (chain) is steady and stable and reliable."
Running three weeks late because of now-resolved problems encountered during an engine test firing last month, the 208-foot-tall Falcon 9 was scheduled for liftoff from complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:20:29 a.m. EST (GMT-5) Tuesday, roughly the moment Earth's rotation moves the booster into the plane of the space station's orbit. Forecasters predicted a 70 percent chance of acceptable weather.
It will be the company's fifth operational resupply mission under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA calling for 12 flights. It will be the first U.S. station supply flight since an Orbital Sciences Antares booster exploded seconds after liftoff Oct. 28, destroying a Cygnus cargo ship making the company's third flight under a separate $1.9 billion contract.
Orbital's Antares rocket is now grounded pending a switch to different engines, leaving SpaceX as NASA's only provider of U.S.-based resupply services. The Russians also launch supplies using unmanned Progress cargo ships and larger Japanese HTV supply ships fly once every year or so. Three Progress launches are planned between now and early August, along with an HTV launch on Aug. 17.
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SpaceX aborts Tuesday space station flight, booster landing try
With one minute left on the countdown, SpaceX scrubbed its flight to the International Space Station this morning because of rocket trouble.
Elon Musk, CEO of the private space flight company that is contracted by NASA, tweeted that the next attempt for the history-making mission will be Friday at 5 a.m.
This SpaceX launch is particularly special from the rest because the company will attempt to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean platform, a tricky maneuver that has a 50 percent chance of succeeding.
Once the Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, it will be headed to the International Space Station with 5,000 pounds of goodies and critical supplies for the astronauts who will be receiving their belated Christmas packages from family and friends back on Earth.
This will be the fifth launch to the space station for the private company that is filling in the gap for NASA with cargo deliveries that were slowed down when the Space Shuttle quit flying.
SpaceX also is in the running, along with Boeing, to get U.S. astronauts off the Russian Soyuz and back on a U.S.-built spacecraft. NASA would like both companies to meet a 2017 deadline, when the current transportation contract with Russia expires.
The Falcon 9 first stage landing will be a nail-bite: It's 14 stories tall and will be hurtling into space then back down to Earth attempting a pinpoint landing on a floating platform. This certainly wont be easy but SpaceX needs to demonstrate its capability and the reusability of its rockets, and this is a spectacular way to do it.
This experiment is important to SpaceX but the cargo is more important to NASA. Last years failure of Orbitals Antares Cygnus, which was carrying critical cargo to the Space Station, has increased the need for the cargo Space X is now delivering.
The cargo includes critical materials for science and research plus replacement parts for the Space Station toilet, along with personal items and fresh food for the astronauts.
When Dragon returns to Earth it will bring back experiments, and trash. No curbside trash pickup in orbit!
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Last Updated Jan 6, 2015 10:32 AM EST
Launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with more than 5,100 pounds of equipment and supplies bound for the International Space Station was called off Tuesday less than two minutes before liftoff because of apparent problems with the second stage engine steering system.
Trouble with a second stage actuator assembly apparently cropped up last month during or in the wake of a first-stage engine test firing, sources said. The test firing was cut short, presumably because of a problem with the first stage propulsion system. SpaceX, in keeping with company policy, did not provide any details.
In any case, launch eventually was delayed three weeks to allow time for a second test firing, to give the SpaceX launch team a break for the Christmas holidays and to allow temperature constraints related to the station's orbit to improve.
Sources said the suspect actuator assembly, one of two used to move the second stage engine nozzle for steering, was examined and given a clean bill of health. The Falcon 9's first- and second-stage systems performed normally during the second countdown and test firing, setting the stage for Tuesday's launch try.
A SpaceX spokesman said Tuesday, after the abort, that he could not address the engine test firing issue or provide any details about the second-stage steering system actuator. A senior SpaceX manager, asked about the test firing problem during a news conference Monday, did not provide any additional details other than saying the issue, whatever it was, had been resolved.
In a brief statement Tuesday, the company spokesman said only that during the terminal countdown "engineers observed drift on one of the two thrust vector actuators on the second stage that would likely have caused an automatic abort. Engineers called a hold in order to take a closer look."
Company founder Elon Musk said in a Twitter posting: "Need to investigate the upper stage Z actuator. Was behaving strangely. Next launch attempt on Friday."
Launch preparations went smoothly early Tuesday and the countdown ticked cleanly through fueling operations toward a planned liftoff at 6:20 a.m. (GMT-5). There were no known technical problems and the weather cooperated with fair conditions.
Then at T-minus one minute and 21 seconds, a SpaceX controller called a hold on the countdown audio net. To reach the space station, the rocket had to launch almost directly into the plane of the lab's orbit, an "instantaneous" launch window that left no margin for delay.
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SpaceX is starting this year with a major step in one of its most ambitious projects, which could fundamentally change the economics of space-flight the reusable rocket that lands on its legs.
There are just a few reusable spacecraft in circulation at the moment, of which the SpaceX Dragon is one, and with good reason. The stresses of spaceflight are arduous enough, but its the re-entry into Earths atmosphere and subsequent landing somewhere that really trips the engineers up.
So far, the only way to successfully rescue a spacecraft has been to let it crash as gently as possible into an ocean to be recovered by waiting ships or have it land like an aeroplane, as with the Space Shuttle.
But Elon Musks SpaceX wants to take things a bit further. The tech entrepreneurs space venture will be boosting its fifth cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station tomorrow and when it does, it plans to attempt the precision landing of the Falcon 9 first stage rocket at the same time.
Autonomous spaceport drone ship for the Falcon 9 reusable rocket. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX reusable rocket is a key feature of its ambitions to build the craft that will take the first people to Mars Mars and its also a technology that could revolutionise space travel, by making it so much cheaper.
The rocket is the most expensive bit of kit involved in a launch and its basically blown up to boost its payload into space, with whatevers left ejected into Earths orbit to clutter the place up with space debris or drift back to a fiery death in Earths atmosphere.
The Falcon 9, which has already had two successful soft water landings, will try something brand new, landing on legs on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship.
SpaceX is only giving this first test of the technology a 50/50 chance of success, because theres a lot to get through before it touches down on that platform.
In order to land the 14-storey tall rocket precisely, the team needs to both stabilise it and slow it down, something the firm compares to .
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SpaceX To Test Reusable Rocket With Daring Drone Ship Landing Today
IMAGE:Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have assembled a bigger and sharper photograph of the iconic Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation. " view more
Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/J. Hester, P. Scowen (Arizona State U.)
Although NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken many breathtaking images of the universe, one snapshot stands out from the rest: the iconic view of the so-called "Pillars of Creation." The jaw-dropping photo, taken in 1995, revealed never-before-seen details of three giant columns of cold gas bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young, massive stars in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, or M16.
Though such butte-like features are common in star-forming regions, the M16 structures are by far the most photogenic and evocative. The Hubble image is so popular that it has appeared in movies and television shows, on T-shirts and pillows, and even on a postage stamp.
And now, in celebration of its upcoming 25th anniversary in April, Hubble has revisited the famous pillars, providing astronomers with a sharper and wider view. As a bonus, the pillars have been photographed in near-infrared light, as well as visible light. The infrared view transforms the pillars into eerie, wispy silhouettes seen against a background of myriad stars. That's because the infrared light penetrates much of the gas and dust, except for the densest regions of the pillars. Newborn stars can be seen hidden away inside the pillars. The new images are being unveiled at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
Although the original image was dubbed the Pillars of Creation, the new image hints that they are also pillars of destruction. "I'm impressed by how transitory these structures are. They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes. The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up and evaporating away into space. We have caught these pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution," explained Paul Scowen of Arizona State University in Tempe. He and astronomer Jeff Hester, formerly of Arizona State University, led the original Hubble observations of the Eagle Nebula.
The infrared image shows that the very ends of the pillars are dense knots of dust and gas. They shadow the gas below them, keeping the gas cool and creating the long, column-like structures. The material in between the pillars has long since been evaporated away by the ionizing radiation from the central star cluster located above the pillars.
At the top edge of the left-hand pillar, a gaseous fragment has been heated up and is flying away from the structure, underscoring the violent nature of star-forming regions. "These pillars represent a very dynamic, active process," Scowen said. "The gas is not being passively heated up and gently wafting away into space. The gaseous pillars are actually getting ionized, a process by which electrons are stripped off of atoms, and heated up by radiation from the massive stars. And then they are being eroded by the stars' strong winds and barrage of charged particles, which are literally sandblasting away the tops of these pillars."
When Scowen and Hester used Hubble to make the initial observations of the Eagle Nebula in 1995, astronomers had seen the pillar-like structures in ground-based images, but not in detail. They knew that the physical processes are not unique to the Eagle Nebula because star birth takes place across the universe. But at a distance of just 6,500 light-years, M16 is the most dramatic nearby example - as the team soon realized.
As Scowen was piecing together the Hubble exposures of the Eagle, he was amazed at what he saw. "I called Jeff Hester on his phone and said, 'You need to get here now,'" Scowen recalled. "We laid the pictures out on the table, and we were just gushing because of all the incredible detail that we were seeing for the very first time."
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Hubble goes high-definition to revisit iconic 'Pillars of Creation'
SpaceX is starting this year with a major step in one of its most ambitious projects, which could fundamentally change the economics of space-flight the reusable rocket that lands on its legs.
There are just a few reusable spacecraft in circulation at the moment, of which the SpaceX Dragon is one, and with good reason. The stresses of spaceflight are arduous enough, but its the re-entry into Earths atmosphere and subsequent landing somewhere that really trips the engineers up.
So far, the only way to successfully rescue a spacecraft has been to let it crash as gently as possible into an ocean to be recovered by waiting ships or have it land like an aeroplane, as with the Space Shuttle.
But Elon Musks SpaceX wants to take things a bit further. The tech entrepreneurs space venture will be boosting its fifth cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station tomorrow and when it does, it plans to attempt the precision landing of the Falcon 9 first stage rocket at the same time.
Autonomous spaceport drone ship for the Falcon 9 reusable rocket. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX reusable rocket is a key feature of its ambitions to build the craft that will take the first people to Mars Mars and its also a technology that could revolutionise space travel, by making it so much cheaper.
The rocket is the most expensive bit of kit involved in a launch and its basically blown up to boost its payload into space, with whatevers left ejected into Earths orbit to clutter the place up with space debris or drift back to a fiery death in Earths atmosphere.
The Falcon 9, which has already had two successful soft water landings, will try something brand new, landing on legs on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship.
SpaceX is only giving this first test of the technology a 50/50 chance of success, because theres a lot to get through before it touches down on that platform.
In order to land the 14-storey tall rocket precisely, the team needs to both stabilise it and slow it down, something the firm compares to .
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SpaceX To Test Revolutionary Rocket's Sea-Legs With Drone Ship Landing
Keeping accurate time and determining age are two crucial, constant goals in science. In the 1700s the proof and construction of an elegant, precise maritime clock opened up much safer and more efficient ocean exploration and provided a way forward for more accurate mapping on Earth. Before then, mariners and astronomers alike were both, literally, at sea.
Likewise, until now, determining the age of stars has been equivalent only to saying that a person is young or old, and our guesses of someones age are typically off by as much as 15 percent. But by building on the work of others (as it goes in science) and carefully working out for over a decade how to construct a clock to measure the ages of stars, Sydney Barnes, of the Leibniz-Institut fuer Astophysik Potsdam (AIP), Germany, derived an elegant and extraordinary method he named gyrochronology to derive a stars age from its spin rate and its mass.
GALLERY: Top 10 Space Stories of 2014: Readers' Choice
Barnes named his method from the Greek gyros which equals rotation, chronos which means time and logos for study.
We here develop an improved way of using a rotating star as a clock, set it using the sun and demonstrate that it keeps time well, wrote Barnes in 2007 (PDF), but his work on this groundbreaking theory goes back to 2000.
Now, in a new study published in the journal Nature and announced today at the 225th American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Barnes and his colleagues have measured more than 20 sun-like stars believed to have identical ages, all belonging to a single a star cluster, and by showing that gyrochronology gives an age of 2.5 billion years for all of them to within 10 percent, have essentially proven the method beyond reasonable doubt.
In fact, the uncertainty on the gyro-age of the cluster as a whole is two percent, which means that the new clock is now more precise than the ones used to set it, said Barnes.
ANALYSIS: Smartest Aliens May Live Around Red Dwarf Stars
The studys team, led by Soren Meibom, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., used NASAs Kepler Space Telescope to measure the tiny variations of starlight over days or weeks that are caused as dark spots on the surfaces of the stars are alternately revealed and hidden by the rotation.
These space telescope measurements represent the culmination of a hard slog for over a decade by Meibom, Barnes and the other co-authors using ground-based telescopes to acquire and analyze the required support observations, to develop the theoretical framework adequately and to measure and interpret other appropriate clusters for possible deviations.
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7 hours ago Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
This photo was captured from outside the enormous mouth of NASA's giant thermal vacuum chamber, called Chamber A, at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Previously used for manned spaceflight missions, this historic chamber is now filled with engineers and technicians preparing a lift system that will be used to hold the James Webb Space Telescope during testing.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
Explore further: NASA's Webb Telescope mirror tripod in action (Video)
(Phys.org)A new photograph taken inside the giant clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., shows what looks like a giant Erector Set supporting a test component of the James ...
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's X-ray and Cryogenic Test Facility recently received the James Webb Space Telescope's wings for testing.
Setting up NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's secondary mirror in space will require special arms that resemble a tripod. NASA recently demonstrated that test in a NASA cleanroom and it was documented in ...
(Phys.org)The Center of Curvature Optical Assembly, or COCOA, is a piece of equipment that will measure the accuracy of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror, to ensure the mirrors are perfectly ...
(Phys.org)Testing of the James Webb Space Telescope's Center of Curvature Optical Assembly, or COCOA, recently was completed in the X-ray and Cryogenic Test Facility at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center ...
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Image: Space simulation chamber prepared for testing Webb telescope
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What is Galaxy group? With images
By: Loco Steve, gareth1953 New Profile, Gwydion M. Williams, rmforall@gmail.com, ir0cko, geckzilla, pareeerica, NASA Goddard Photo and Video, NASA Goddard ...
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Kerbal Space Program 0.90 Mod Showcase - FASA Rocket Pack !
Hello BlockRoomians! ROCKETz N Snacks! SUBSCRIBE! : http://www.youtube.com/user/theblockroom FASA (The Mod): https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/27/FASA Music By Kevin MacLeod ...
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Kerbal Space Program 0.90 Mod Showcase - FASA Rocket Pack ! - Video
The International Space Station, where Scott Kelly of Nasa and Michael Komienko of Roscosmos will spend a year orbiting Earth. Photograph: Nasa/Getty Images
Like characters in a sci-fi movie, two astronauts will soon learn what it is like to spend a year orbiting Earth on board the International Space Station.
An American and a Russian will undertake the mission together to test the physiological and psychological effects of long-term space flight.
The aim is to see how the human body will bear up on future voyages to a distant asteroid or Mars, which might last several months.
Unlike the residents of many fictional space stations, the two volunteers will not enjoy the benefits of artificial gravity.
Extended periods spent in microgravity are known to cause increased bone and muscle loss, reduced heart and artery function and impaired sensory motor performance.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft will carry Scott Kelly of Nasa and Michael Komienko, from the Russian space agency Roscosmos, to the ISS in March.
Dr Michael Barratt, from Nasas Human Research Programme at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, said: This will build on the rich experience of long-duration flights, including four flights of a year or more conducted by our Russian colleagues on the Mir station.
We have progressed considerably in our understanding of the human physiology in space and in countermeasures to preserve bone, muscle and fitness since then. The space station programme provides us a robust framework for international collaboration that enables us to realise tremendous returns from such an experience.
John Charles, chief of the programmes International Science Office, said data from six-month spells in space did not suggest that the human body adjusts to a new adapted state over that period of time.
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Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft will take tourists to the International Space Station from U.S. soil as early as 2017.
Looking for a vacation that costs up to $50 million, has no showers and is likely to make you sick? Its no luxury resort, but traveling to outer space can be the ultimate adventure for thrill-seekers with lots of disposable income. Its as exclusive as it gets fewer than 550 people have ever been, only eight of them paying tourists. But the journey will get more accessible in the next few years, as a handful of companies compete to launch the first commercial space flights.
Until now, the only way to buy a trip to the stars has been through Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company that has facilitated trips to the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz rockets since 2001. Clients have included billionaire Cirque du Soleil cofounder Guy Laliberte, British-American game designer Richard Garriott and South-African software millionaire Mark Shuttleworth.
Charles Simonyi, the Hungarian-born billionaire behind the creation of Microsoft Word and Excel, is the only tourist whos gone twice. He flew to the ISS in 2007 and 2009, paying a total of around $60 million (Space Adventures now charges $50 million per trip).
Before his first take-off, Simonyi spent six months training alongside cosmonauts in Star City, near Moscow, where he exercised, learned about spaceflight and survival, and studied Russian. He had to see nearly 100 doctors and pass dozens of medical tests.
Simonyi then joined a pair of cosmonauts on a two-day trip to the ISS, which is about the size of a three-bedroom house. He spent 12 days there, taking part in medical experiments, getting to know the long-term residents and channeling Earth on amateur radio. He played a bit of space golf and called home. Of course, he spent a lot of time gazing out at the globe.
Its the speed thats the most amazing. Every 90 minutes, you see spring, you see fall, you see the Arctic, you see the tropics, you see night, you see day, he said. I realized it was an extraordinary experience, and I just had to take it all in.
Anousheh Ansari, who traveled a year before Simonyi and was the first female space tourist, wrote, The stars up here are unbelievable. It looks like someone has spread diamond dust over a black velvet blanket.
On his first flight, Simonyi brought two books: Robert Heinleins sci-fi classic The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and a dual-language edition of Goethes Faust. The last lines of the latter became his personal slogan for the mission: The eternal feminine draws us upward. On his second trip, Simony took his wedding ring and photos of his new wife. He also brought flags American, Hungarian and Swedish to get stamped at the ISS.
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Ready For Blast Off: Billionaire Charles Simonyi On What To Pack For Space Travel
KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM (With Misan) Part 11: MUN LANDING!
Kerbal Space Program is a space flight simulator developed by Squad currently in public beta development for release on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can get the game on steam.
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KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM (With Misan) Part 11: MUN LANDING! - Video
Jupiter #39;s Shrinking Great Red Spot
Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon and M. Estacion (STScI) Acknowledgment: C. Go, H. Hammel (Space Science Institute and AURA), and R. Beebe (New Mexico State University) Science Credit:.
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The Space Flight Awareness (SFA) program recently recognized Barrios Technologys MAPI employee Dana Tobeck with the prestigious SFA Honoree Award for her dedication and commitment to the ISS Program.
Tobeck, a Principal Project Controls Specialist, was recognized for her leadership in establishing work plan and management systems. Tasked with organizing how MAPI tracks over 40,000 contract-delivered products and service units for each Statement of Work (SOW) element, Tobeck developed a measurement system along with training for MAPI management that ensures quality Annual Work Plans (AWPs) and provided management insight into work variances. She personally working with each supervisor to ensure her approach was consistently applied across the organization. For FY2015, Tobeck utilized lessons learned to improve tracking, partnering, and review processes. She reduced the size for the FY2015 AWP by 45%, and initiated earlier interactions with the NASA customer. The improved process allowed the AWP product to be provided to the NASA customer one month early and eliminating approximately three months of coordination effort between 45 NASA points of contact and 27 MAPI personnel.
Tobeck has worked in the space industry for over 15 years on various NASA programs. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Houston as well as a graduate degree from Texas A&M University.
The SFA Honoree Award is one of the highest presented to NASA and industry. To qualify, the individuals must have contributed beyond their normal work requirements to achieve significant impact on attaining a particular human space flight program goal; contributed to a major cost savings; been instrumental in developing modification to hardware, software, or materials that increase reliability, efficiency, or performance; assisted in operational improvements; or been a key player in developing a beneficial process improvement.
The SFA Program is a NASA managed motivational program geared at ensuring that every employee involved in human space flight is aware of the importance of their role in promoting astronaut safety and mission success in the critical, challenging task of flying humans in space by communicating and educating the government and industry workforce about human space flight.
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The private space travel company Virgin Galactic is more committed than ever to its commercial spaceliner business as it recovers from a tragic SpaceShipTwo crash that killed one test pilot and injured another last year, company founder Sir Richard Branson wrote Friday (Jan. 2).
In a blog postreflecting on the Oct. 31 SpaceShipTwo crash, Branson wrote that he initially had doubts about whether it was wise to proceed with SpaceShipTwo's development in the wake of the tragic test flight. But ultimately, he and the company decided to move forward.
"As I traveled from my home to Mojave that Friday evening, I found myself questioning seriously for the first time, whether in fact it was right to be backing the development of something that could result in such tragic circumstances," Branson wrote in the blog post.
"In short was Virgin Galactic, and everything it has stood for and dreamt of achieving, really worth it? I got a very firm answer to that question immediately when I landed in Mojave. From the designers, the builders, the engineers, the pilots and the whole community who passionately believed and still believe that truly opening space and making it accessible and safe is of vital importance to all our futures." [SpaceShipTwo Crash Investigation in Photos]
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceliner is designed to carry eight people (two pilots and six passengers) on roundtrips to suborbital space for $250,000 per seat. The spacecraft is designed to be launched from a high-altitude carrier plane called WhiteKnightTwo. Branson, a British billionaire, founded the company in 2004.
The Oct. 31 SpaceShipTwo accident killed co-pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injured pilot Peter Siebold after the vehicle broke apart and crashed during a test flight over California's Mojave Desert. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) opened an investigation into the crash, which will take months at the least to complete.
In November, NTSB officials reported that SpaceShipTwo's unique "feathering" system on its tail, which is designed to be used during re-entry, had deployed prematurely during the flight, apparently by Alsbury. At the time, Siebold was unaware of the feathering system's early deployment, according to a preliminary NTSB report.
Branson's blog post also said Virgin Galactic's customers who paid up to $250,000 apiece for a seat displayed an "outpouring of support" in the days following the crash. However, multiple media reports have stated that some customers have requested refunds since the crash, including the United Kingdom's Princess Beatrice.
Virgin Galactic has pushed back the first flight date for its space tourism business many times over the years, but prior to the crash, Branson had estimated it would happen in late 2014 or sometime in 2015. The company is currently building a second SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which would be the next in line for flight tests once it is completed.
The company has not released an estimated start time since, but Branson's blog post said Virgin will show "unwavering commitment to safety and a renewed sense of purpose."
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Virgin Galactic Will Recover from Tragic Crash, Richard Branson Says
KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM (With Misan) Part 9: Better rocket?
Kerbal Space Program is a space flight simulator developed by Squad currently in public beta development for release on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can get the game on steam.
By: MultiParadoxVideos
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KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM (With Misan) Part 9: Better rocket? - Video