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Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo: Test Flight Milestones

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On Oct. 31, 2014, during its 55thtest flight and its fourth powered test flight, SpaceShipTwo suffered a serious accident, resulting in the destruction of the vehicle and death of one pilot, while another pilot parachuted to safety with injuries.

SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital space plane designed and built by Scaled Composites. The vehicle is designed to carry two pilots and six passengers on short space flights. Its predecessor SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004, after becoming the first private craft to fly people to space and back twice in the span of a week. Virgin Galactic has partnered with Scaled Composites with the intention of using SpaceShipTwo for commercial suborbital space flight. [Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crash: Full Coverage]

Here is a timeline of major events and test flights for Virgin Galactic:

October 2004 - Virgin Galactic Announced -British billionaire Sir Richard Branson announces that he is forming the new company Virgin Galactic to build a passenger space plane for suborbital flights after witnessing SpaceShipOne win the Ansari X Prize.The new company would work closely with SpaceShipOne's builder Scaled Composites to build a new two-pilot, six-passenger spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo.

Dec. 7, 2009: First SpaceShipTwo Vehicle Unveiled-Virgin Galactic hosted a major event to debut the first SpaceShipTwo vehicle, called the Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise.

March 22, 2010: First Capture-Carry Flight-The carrier plane WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) went aloft for the first time while carrying SpaceShipTwo. The plane was unmanned and was not released.

July 16, 2010: First Crewed Flight-SpaceShipTwo was carried by the WhiteKnightTwocarrier plane for 6 hours and 12 minutes, but was not released. Peter Siebold and Michael Alsbury rode aboardthe VSS Enterprise and evaluated the spacecraft's systems and functions.

Oct. 10, 2010: First Solo Glide Flight-SpaceShipTwo was released at 46,000 feet, and had a total flight time of 13 minutes. The test was a glide flight only, meaning the engines were not turned on. The vehicle was piloted by Peter Siebold and copiloted by Mike Alsbury.

April 29, 2013: First Powered Test Flight-SpaceShipTwo ran its engines for 16 seconds while free of the carrier plane. The vehicle climbed to a maximum altitude of 56,000 feet (17,000 meters), and reached Mach 1.2 or 761 miles per hour (1224 km/h) at sea level, fast enough to break the sound barrier. This was SpaceShipTwo's 26th test flight, and it was preceded by two glide test flights, on April 3 and April 12. The flight was piloted by Mark Stucky and co-piloted by Mike Alsbury.

Sept. 5 2013: Second Powered Test Flight-SpaceShipTwo burned its engines for 20 secondsfour seconds longer than on the previous flight. The craft beat its previous record for altitude and speed, reaching a maximum altitude of 65,000 feet (21031 meters) and a top speed of Mach 1.6 or 1,217 miles per hour at sea level. The craft was piloted by Mark Stucky and copiloted by Clint Nichols.

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Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo: Test Flight Milestones

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Crashes in Test Flight, 1 …

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Virgin Galactic's suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo crashed today (Oct. 31) in California during a rocket-powered test flight that resulted in the death of one pilot and injuries to the other one.

SpaceShipTwo "suffered a serious anomaly" just after its rocket motor ignited for the test flight, leading to the crash of the spacecraft and death of one pilot. Another pilot sustained injuries and was taken to Antelope Valley Hospital. The pilots were with the Mojave, California-based aerospace company Scaled Composites, which built and is testing SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.

"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said during a news conference today. "We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we're going to get through it. The future rests, in many ways, on hard days like this. But we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who have been working so hard on them to understand this and to move forward, which is what we'll do."

SpaceShipTwo was lofted into the air by its carrier craft WhiteKnightTwo when the pair took off from California's Mojave Air and Space Port at 12:20 p.m. EDT (1620 GMT). The carrier craft then released SpaceShipTwo at 1:10 p.m. EDT, and officials on the ground noticed an "in-flight anomaly" about two minutes later, CEO and general manager of the space port Stuart Witt said during the news conference.

One eyewitness to the event, Doug Messier, managing editor ofParabolicarc.com, saw SpaceShipTwo's engine sputter when it first came to life during the test flight, after WhiteKnightTwo released it.

"It looked like the engine didn't perform properly," Messier told Space.com's Tariq Malik. "Normally it would burn and it would burn for a certain period of time. It looked like it may have started and then stopped and then started again."

Then, Messier saw the ship break apart. "I didn't see an explosion, but it definitely broke into pieces," he added.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson is on his way to the Mojave to be with his team now.

"Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled, thanks for all your messages of support," Branson wrote in an update on Twitter. "I'm flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team."

The exact nature of the problem that caused the crash has not yet been released. "During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle," Virgin Galactic representatives said in a statement.

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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes in Test Flight, 1 ...

Manned commercial space flight: The final unregulated frontier

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Space is the final frontier, but under current law manned commercial space flight is a largely unregulated frontier in the U.S.

The destruction of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a test flight last week, which killed one pilot and injured another, is a reminder that even as we rush towards commercial space tourism and travel, the industry is fraught with dangers -- dangers some experts say the current regulatory framework is not yet prepared to handle.

While decades of NASA's space program resulted in a framework for dealing with the aftermath of accidents involving publicly funded missions that involved major commissions and the input from multiple agencies, the SpaceShipTwo accident serves as the trial run for investigating manned commercial space accidents.

The Federal Aviation Administration does have the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, also known as AST. However the office does not certify the safety of spacecrafts the same way the FAA certifies the safety of passenger airliners. Instead, it licenses launches, but that licensing is all about the safety of people on the ground or making sure the spacecrafts do nothitothercraftsin the air.

"What AST does is protect third parties and property from damage byactivities in space -- they do not regulate the actual space flight and payloads except to require enough insurance of safety that third parties will not be injured," said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University.

"The FAA is prohibited from regulating launch or reentry vehicle occupant safety until late in 2015, barring a death, serious injury, of or close call that can be attributed to a design feature or operating practice, under Commercial Space Launch Act," said FAA spokesperson Hank Price in a statement. "The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 extended this prohibition on occupant safety regulations to October 1, 2015."

Until the SpaceShipTwo accident, no activity that AST licensed or permitted had resulted in serious injury or a crew fatality, he said.

Licensing does include insurance requirements for the "maximum probable loss" of covered claims from third parties, which is calculated by the FAA after operators provide them with information about pre-, post-, and in-flight processes.

The investigation into the SpaceShipTwo accident is being handled by the National Transportation Safety Board. The roughly 400 NTSB employees split between its headquarters in Washington and four regional field offices investigate every civil aviation accident in the U.S., along with major accidents in other modes of transportation such asrailways or even natural gas pipelines.

But the agency has no formal authority to regulate the transportation industry -- instead, it is charged with conducting independent investigations and making safety recommendations. The agency did its first investigation into a commercial rocket launch in the early 90s and assisted the investigation of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is thefirst time it is leading an investigation into a manned spacecraft accident.

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Manned commercial space flight: The final unregulated frontier

NASA's rocket to Mars to be tested next month

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Ready to go: Part of NASA's Orion spacecraft is prepared for its first flight at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: AP

Washington: With memories still fresh of two commercial space flight accidents in the past 10 days, NASA is readying its first test flight of the Orion spacecraft that could one day carry humans to Mars.

No one will be on board when Orion launches next month from Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the test will involve more than $US370 million ($400 million) in rocket equipment and hardware.

That price tag does not include the cost of building the lolly-shaped Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, built by Lockheed Martin to carry people into deep space.

Space traveller: The Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, which could carry humans to Mars, is scheduled to launch atop a rocket. Photo: AFP

The test mission, known as EFT-1, is scheduled to blast off on December 4 at 7.05am local time from a NASA launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre.

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It aims to end with an ocean splashdown about 4 hours later.

"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said William Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development.

"This is really our first step on our journey to Mars."

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NASA's rocket to Mars to be tested next month

NASA launch to test human Mars mission capsule next month

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Ready to go: Part of NASA's Orion spacecraft is prepared for its first flight at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: AP

Washington: With memories still fresh of two commercial space flight accidents in the past 10 days, NASA is readying its first test flight of the Orion spacecraft that could one day carry humans to Mars.

No one will be on board when Orion launches next month from Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the test will involve more than $US370 million ($400 million) in rocket equipment and hardware.

That price tag does not include the cost of building the lolly-shaped Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, built by Lockheed Martin to carry people into deep space.

Space traveller: The Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, which could carry humans to Mars, is scheduled to launch atop a rocket. Photo: AFP

The test mission, known as EFT-1, is scheduled to blast off on December 4 at 7.05am local time from a NASA launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre.

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It aims to end with an ocean splashdown about 4 hours later.

"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said William Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development.

"This is really our first step on our journey to Mars."

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NASA launch to test human Mars mission capsule next month

Space blast no deterrent for Rocket man

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Christchurch's own rocket man still wants to be launched into space after a test flight for the world's first space tourism venture ended in tragedy.

Christchurch entrepreneur Mark Rocket paid about $300,000 in 2006 to book a flight on one of Virgin Galactic's first commercial space flights.

Rocket told The Press yesterday he was not put off going into space by the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo during a test flight near Los Angeles last week.

The crash killed 39-year-old co-pilot Michael Alsbury and injured pilot Pete Siebold, 43.

Did lever bring down Virgin Galactic spaceship?

Virgin Galactic pilot defied odds

Virgin Galactic looks to resume tests: CEO

Rocket said there was a lot of speculation about what happened but he fully supported Virgin Galactic and its "ambitious goal" of making space more accessible.

"Obviously it's a dream to get into space . . . it's something that would be an incredible experience," he said.

Rocket co-founded aerospace company Rocket Lab in 2007, which was responsible for the first privately owned rocket to be launched in the southern hemisphere.

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Space blast no deterrent for Rocket man

What Went Wrong With Space Travel Last Week?

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Space is hard. It's a refrain we're hearing quite a bit in the wake of a pair of accidents involving private space firms.

Space is hard. It's a refrain we're hearing quite a bit in the wake of a terrible week for private spaceflight.

Just days after an Orbital Sciences rocket carrying supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) exploded above a launch pad in eastern Virginia, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight above California's Mojave Desert, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

Is spaceflight so hard, so inherently risky that we can't do it more safely and without accidents like those of the past weekor at least in such a way that catastrophic failures and loss of life happen much less frequently?

As news of the Orbital and Virgin Galactic accidents spread, many in the space community defaulted to the familiar, resigned reaction to such events. Space exploration isdespite all of the science and expertise behind it, despite all of our wonderful accomplishments over the past six decadesstill ultimately about pushing the envelope to pretty much the furthest extremes we humans have ever dared.

There's a natural instinct to forgive those involved in spacefaring attempts that go wrong. It stems in part from a desire to push back fast against the blowback from a high-profile accident. A Challenger disaster, to cite perhaps the most prominent example, can depress the public's willingness to keep challenging space, potentially setting back humanity's desire to keep building, innovating, and dreaming in our efforts to throw off the shackles of our Earthly home.

Who Is to Blame? But not everybody has been so accepting of the perils of space flight in the days following these latest incidents. That's been especially true with regards to the SpaceShipTwo test flight conducted by Virgin Galactic partner Scaled Composites, which cost the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury.

The journalist Joel Glenn Brenner, who is writing a book about the development of SpaceShipOne, the Ansari X Prize-winning predecessor to the vehicle that crashed last week, spoke of "technical difficulties" with SpaceShipTwo that were allegedly known and discussed "behind closed doors" by an outwardly optimistic Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.

International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) rocket propulsion scientist Carolynne Campbell-Knight went on record with the U.K.'s Daily Mail saying she'd warned Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson that using nitrous oxide in the fuel mix for the company's suborbital vehicle was like playing "Russian Roulette [as to] which test flight blew up."

Three Scaled Composites employees died in a 2007 explosion while testing a new rocket fuel mix using nitrous oxide, so these aren't exactly the ravings of mindless critics.

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What Went Wrong With Space Travel Last Week?

Spacesuit? Life insurance? Space tourist loophole may end

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NEW YORK While private pilots and skydivers have to take out extra life insurance to cover the added risk of their pursuits, space tourists do not need special policies on their high flying rides.

That loophole is likely to disappear, slowly, after the fatal crash last week of a test flight of a Virgin Galactic space ship designed to take tourists into space.

The loophole exists because U.S. life insurance policies dont ask about space tourism or exclude it from coverage, meaning insurers most likely would have to pay if the holder died on a space trip, insurance industry veterans said.

Insurance companies, which say they are considering what to do about space tourists after the Virgin crash, are likely to start adding questions about space travel and may even explicitly exclude space coverage, the industry observers said.

The companies themselves are taking a cautious approach.

If we had an applicant with such plans, we would postpone any underwriting decision until they returned, Prudential spokeswoman Sheila Bridgeforth said.

Northwestern Mutual said that it is paying close attention to the issue after the crash but that there is too little safety data to assess the risk of space tourism. U.S. life insurer MetLife said it doesnt have imminent plans to offer space tourism insurance.

Still, the industry is starting to gear up for space tourists, just as they cover satellite launches. Pembroke Managing Agency offers a policy that pays up to $5 million per space passenger or up to $20 million per trip, according to parent Ironshore International, which announced the policy in June.

I suspect in insurance company offices all over the country right now as a result of whats happened to the Virgin Galactic plane its being discussed, said Burke Christensen, former insurance lawyer and chief executive.

It would take time, perhaps years, for those changes to be approved by all U.S. state insurance commissioners, he noted.

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Spacesuit? Life insurance? Space tourist loophole may end

After two crashes, how can commercial space flights be regulated?

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Back in the day when space exploration was the brave new frontier of John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and a monkey named Gordo, NASA presided over it all with a god-like presence.

In 2014, with a rocket exploding near one coast and a futuristic spaceship crashing near the other, theres another new frontier: regulating corporate Americas rush to capitalize on the vacuum created when NASA retired from hands-on space flight.

Into that void, Congress thrust the Federal Aviation Administration, charging it with setting the guidelines for a fledgling industry that has drawn more than a half dozen companies with a variety of goals.

Its a little bit different than the rest of the aviation oversight that we do, said FAA spokeswoman Laura J. Brown, because the industry is kind of where the Wright brothers were in aviation.

Some companies want to deliver payloads to the orbiting International Space Station; others plan to launch satellites and research missions; and some intend to carry paying passengers on joyrides into space.

A rocket that was to resupply the International Space Station blew up a few seconds after lift-off from Wallops Island, Va. (NASA)

The Antares rocket that exploded on takeoff from Virginias Eastern Shore on Oct. 28 was built by Orbital Sciences and bound for the space station carrying the unmanned Cygnus spacecraft loaded with food, water and equipment. The Virgin Galactic spacecraft that crashed on a test flight in the Mojave Desert three days later was designed to carry passengers into flight.

The fact that the spacecraft flew under two different FAA guidelines underscores the nascent nature of space flight regulation. It also reflects the challenge federal regulators face in governing emerging technologies: Step in too soon with a heavy hand and it may stifle creative thinking.

A current example: The people developing the new breed of autonomous cars have begged state and federal regulators not to impose rigid guidelines until they can refine how best to make things work.

Congress has taken the viewpoint that they understand that [commercial space flight] is an evolving industry, Brown said, and if you put a regulatory framework in place that was as constrictive or as comprehensive as it is in commercial aviation, it would basically kill the industry before it got off the ground.

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After two crashes, how can commercial space flights be regulated?

'Interstellar' Review: Reaching for the stars

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'Suddenly, for a short amount of time, the stars arent so far away,' writes Zig Marasigan

The difficulties of space travel are very real. After the recent crash of Virgin Galactics SpaceShip Two and the mid-flight explosion of the unmanned NASA Antares rocket, spaceflight has had a spotty record at best over the past two weeks.

FORWARD. The voyage to space takes its emotional toll. All photos courtesy of Warner Bros

But despite the inherent risks of space flight, the scientific community continues to reach passionately, and perhaps foolishly, for the stars. (READ: New Nolan movie Interstellar tackles space, love, sacrifice)

Coincidentally, Interstellar is very similar in that regard. It is an ambitious piece of cinematic work that brazenly attempts to distill the herculean task of interstellar travel into a palatable 3-hour movie. But like the doomed population of Earth, the odds are against it.

Set in the indeterminate future, Interstellar doesnt shower us with visions of technological progress. Instead, the film greets us with the familiar vistas of the American countryside. But hiding behind the postcard views of cornfields and rural homes is the depressing reality that the world is running out of food.

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former pilot and engineer, has resigned himself to life as a farmer, helping grow corn for surviving members of humanity. But when Cooper stumbles upon a decades-long plan to leave Earth, he is asked to lead a team of scientists to establish humanitys first extraterrestrial colony.

From its premise alone, Interstellar grasps at more straws than it can realistically handle. The idea of following humanitys first steps into the far reaches of space is already a large enough concept, and depicting it in any believable fashion is no small matter.

But director and co-writer Christopher Nolan was never known to be a filmmaker with small ideas. Interstellar is Nolans most ambitious project to date, which says a lot about the man behind The Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception. And while Interstellar does stretch itself thin in a lot of places, it does so with the same dauntless ambition that makes space, truly, the final frontier.

Larger than life

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'Interstellar' Review: Reaching for the stars

Is there a place for private companies to send civilians on space flight?

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Americans are spoiled when it comes to space travel. We beat the Soviet Union (now Russia) to the moon. We've sent unmanned crafts to Mars. We've sent craft toward Jupiter. Our satellites roam the nightly skies.

So when there's an accident involving a rocket, such as the one involving an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station that exploded just above the launching pad, or the "anomaly" experienced by the Virgin Galatic test vehicle SpaceShipTwo that crashed in the Mojave Desert Friday, the question comes up as to how such a thing can happen.

Virgin Atlantic chief Richard Branson expressed shock at the crash but vowed to push on.

"Space is hard - but worth it. We will persevere and move forward together," Branson said.

Admirable, to be sure, but is it really achievable in the long run? When tragedy struck the American space program (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) with the fire aboard the Apollo spacecraft that killed three astronauts, NASA and the space program rebounded.

When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on liftoff or when the Shuttle Columbia blew up upon return, the space program rebounded.

But will those who can afford the $250,000 ticket for three exhilarating minutes want to take the chance? Time will tell.

The accident left one pilot dead, the other seriously wounded. But it leaves an even greater void. NASA has already seen its budget diminish, and the shuttle program has been mothballed. The public hasn't demonstrated a strong desire to see the billions of dollars in taxpayer money sent into outer space.

It all begs a larger question. Is there truly a place for space travel for private companies taking civilians up into the outer reaches of space?

Given the exploratory nature of humans, it's a question that at some point, those companies and the American people may not know how to answer.

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Is there a place for private companies to send civilians on space flight?

Why space tourism is worth the risk

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Accidents will happen as commercial space travel develops, but if we want more widespread space flight we shouldn't be deterred by them

ANOMALY. That was the bland term used by both Orbital Sciences and Virgin Galactic to describe what turned out to be the destruction of their respective spacecraft last week.

Orbital's cargo ship was lost when its Antares carrier rocket exploded a few seconds after lift-off, while Virgin's SpaceShipTwo, designed to carry high-flying tourists, came apart in mid-air killing one pilot and injuring the other (see "SpaceShipTwo crash: Wings were unlocked too soon").

Why such understatement? There's a tradition of euphemism in space flight: think of "Houston, we've had a problem". That's partly born of reluctance to jump to conclusions when the situation is unclear; it's also rooted in the mindset that any deviation from the plan, no matter how dramatic, must be examined and explained. As Space Race test pilots put it: "To err is human, to forgive is divine; neither is Air Force policy."

That mentality has never been clearer than in the aftermath of the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986. The combination of fault-finding, wounded national pride and budget constraints led to a cooling of political backing for crewed space flight from which NASA has never really recovered, leaving it dependent on private contractors like Orbital Sciences.

By contrast, the SpaceShipTwo crash, while obviously tragic for those involved, is ultimately an industrial accident one that the company, and industry, should learn from. That's the attitude needed if human space travel is ever to become routine, as many hope it will. The UK Space Agency, for example, plans to open a British spaceport by 2018. And one firm thinks it could be launching 400 space tourists a year within a decade (see "UK spaceport plan boosts engineering careers").

Of course, the challenge for such firms at the moment is finding passengers willing to buy a ticket, now the perils have been so dramatically highlighted. Space tourism currently looks less like a pleasure trip than an extreme sport, to be conducted at tourists' own risk. "If certification of spacecraft was demanded as you would for, say, a Boeing 787, in all probability the industry would never get off the ground," Virgin Galactic's boss George Whitesides told New Scientist before the crash and before his firm was forced to rebut allegations that it had taken a lax approach to safety.

Still, as we went to press, New Scientist had no confirmed reports of Virgin customers cancelling seats. Space tourism generally will survive and perhaps even thrive. The huge expense and frequent accidents of early aviation did not stop the well-heeled from getting on planes, followed by the rest of us. History may repeat itself.

Should it? Air travel is a means to an end, whereas today's space tourism is an end in itself. When it comes to knowledge, real progress lies with robots. Machines go where we currently cannot to the far side of the moon, for example, from which vantage point China's Chang'e 5-T1 last week returned the stunning image above. Next week, the Philae lander will try to touch down on comet 67P (see "Rosetta: Days from the toughest space landing ever"). If it succeeds, it will help us understand the origins of the solar system, and perhaps of life.

Next to that, space tourism might look like no more than an enviable indulgence. But we won't know what space really has to offer humanity until more of us can go there. That means making space travel safer and that implies the cycle of investigation and improvement that has made air travel what it is today.

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Why space tourism is worth the risk


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