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Branson: 'We are determined to find out what went wrong' in spaceplane incident
By Ralph Ellis, Chelsea J. Carter and Jason Hanna, CNN
updated 1:25 PM EDT, Sat November 1, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Virgin Group founder Richard Branson vows to find out 'what went wrong'
- NASA's administrator says death of pilot felt by all who devoted lives to exploration
- Both pilots worked for Virgin Galactic's partner, Scaled Composites
- One pilot died, and one is seriously injured, officials say
(CNN) -- Virgin Group founder Richard Branson said Saturday that invesigators will find out what caused the
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo to break apart during a test flight over the Mojave Desert Friday, killing one pilot and injuring another.
"We are determined to find out what went wrong," he said at a press conference
"We're not going to push on blindly," he said. "We're going to learn from what went wrong."
Branson said leaders of Virgin Galactic have received messages of support from NASA and other agencies.
"The space community sticks together," he said
But he said he couldn't talk about the investigation being conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The first sign there was a problem with
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo came at about 45,000 feet, just two minutes after the spaceplane separated from the jet-powered aircraft that carried it aloft.
It wasn't something overt
with SpaceShipTwo, said Stuart Witt, the chief executive of Mojave Air
& Space Port in California, where it was launched and monitored. It
was what didn't happen next during the test flight, he said. Witt did
not offer details, but appeared to indicate the spaceplane did not
follow its previous test-flight patterns.
Nothing seemed abnormal during the takeoff or flight prior to the spaceplane's failure, Witt told reporters.
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SpaceShipTwo has 'anomaly' in test flight
Virgin Galactic conducted "extensive ground testing of all parts of the spaceship," Branson said earlier.
"We've always known that
the road to space is extremely difficult -- and that every new
transportation system has to deal with bad days early in their history,"
Branson said in a statement as he was en route to the firm's Mojave
site.
The pilot who is hospitalized parachuted to the ground, Virgin Galactic said.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of all those affected by this tragic accident," it said.
The two pilots worked
for Scaled Composites, its president, Kevin Mickey, said. He declined to
publicly identify the pilots or detail their experience.
"Space is hard, and
today was a tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation
as we figure out what happened today, and we are going to get through
it," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said.
"The future rests in many ways on hard, hard days like this."
For years, Virgin
Galactic has planned to sell trips in which SpaceShipTwo transports
passengers about 62 miles above Earth -- the beginning of outer space --
and lets them experience a few minutes of weightlessness before
returning to ground.
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. The jet-powered WhiteKnightTwo returned
safely to the Mojave Air & Space Port, Witt said.
Said Branson: "This was
the latest part of an extensive test flight program, and the 55th time
SpaceShipTwo had flown. It was WhiteKnightTwo's 173rd flight and the
35th time SpaceShipTwo had flown freely."
Questions are being
raised about a new fuel mixture used after Mickey said it had been
ground-tested a number of times, but Friday's flight was the first time
it was used in a test flight.
The National
Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation with FAA
support, under a voluntary cooperative agreement between the agencies.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden offered his condolences to the family of the pilot killed in the test flight failure.
"While not a NASA
mission, the pain of this tragedy will be felt by all the men and women
who have devoted their lives to exploration," Bolden said. "Spaceflight
is incredibly difficult, and we commend the passion of all in the space
community who take on risk to push the boundaries of human achievement."
It's unclear what the
failure of the spaceplane will mean for the program. Virgin Galactic
planned to send paying customers on SpaceShipTwo as early as next year.
Virgin has sold more
than 700 tickets, each costing more than $250,000, for future flights.
Several celebrities have already signed up, including Justin Bieber,
Ashton Kutcher, Leonardo DiCaprio and Stephen Hawking.
With composite
lightweight materials, "feathered" rudders capable of turning 90 degrees
and a hybrid rocket engine, SpaceShipTwo is as safe as modern
technology can make it. As designer and aviator Burt Rutan put it in
2008, "This vehicle is designed to go into the atmosphere in the worst
case straight in or upside down and it'll correct."
Details of Friday's test
flight plan were not immediately known. But in previous test flights,
SpaceShipTwo has been loaded on the jet-powered WhiteKnightTwo, which
can take the spaceplane to about 50,000 feet before the spaceplane is
released to fly free.
At that altitude, SpaceShipTwo would then fire its RocketMotorTwo, a hybrid rocket engine powered by both solid and liquid fuel.
SpaceShipTwo would reach
supersonic speeds on its way to its intended altitude of about 62 miles
above the Earth. At that point, people onboard would get about five
minutes of weightlessness before the bonds of Earth retract with 6 G's
of force.
The spaceplane would then glide back through the atmosphere to landing.
Friday's is the second incident in a week involving the commercial space industry.
On Tuesday, an unmanned Antares rocket exploded just after takeoff off the coast of Virginia. Controllers
deliberately destroyed the craft after it became apparent there was a problem, a spokesman for Orbital Sciences Corp. said Thursday.
end quote from:
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