Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has crashed

[Bigtime]

Breaking now:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can...e=news_central

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-crash/382216/

Virgin Galactic says that its SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft has suffered an "in-flight anomaly".

The craft was being tested in the Mojave Desert region of California. Virgin Galactic said it would issue a fuller statement shortly.

Playback of the flight from Flightradar24:

http://www.flightradar24.com/2014-10...5.29,-117.01/9

[Arya Stark]

Hopefully the pilots got out in time.

[morgin]

Was listening to the scanner - sounds like 1 pilot survived, 1 didn't.

[CaptainCrunch]

Not a good week for the space industry.

[Bigtime]

No, sure isn't. However it is sadly a reminder of still how dangerous spaceflight and sub-orbital flight is.

Test pilots, best of the best putting it out there to push forward.

[Bigtime]

The Atlantic reporting 1 dead and 1 with a "major injury":

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-crash/382216/

[burn_this_city]

Brutal. Can they even eject? From the pictures of the spacecraft it looks like theres only a hatch.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Brutal. Can they even eject? From the pictures of the spacecraft it looks like theres only a hatch.

Typically only military jets have ejection seats. Most -- if not all -- civilian pilots fly without a parachute.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Brutal. Can they even eject? From the pictures of the spacecraft it looks like theres only a hatch.

Plus their ejection window I would think would be fairly small and really hazardous.

[Bigtime]

NPR reporting a debris field about 2 miles long.

[burn_this_city]

I know after Challenger astronauts trained on escaping from the shuttle.

[WhiteTiger]

This sucks to hear. =(

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

I know after Challenger astronauts trained on escaping from the shuttle.

I thought that was just during an aborted launch or a close to launch incident.

I don't think there was much of a plan for return to earth escapes after they had installed four command seats in the cockpit instead of two.

Plus ejecting from a shuttle traveling that fast and hot after re-entry would probably be pretty fatal.

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I thought that was just during an aborted launch or a close to launch incident.

I don't think there was much of a plan for return to earth escapes after they had installed four command seats in the cockpit instead of two.

Plus ejecting from a shuttle traveling that fast and hot after re-entry would probably be pretty fatal.

It was only for the first 100 seconds of flight, and even then it was only in certain circumstances.

[CaptainCrunch]

Yeah.

I remember when they were first testing the shuttle they had ejection seats in them, but that's because they were testing landing profiles from the back of a 747. Once it went active the ejection seats were removed.

[Nehkara]

This is just awful. I have been following this project very closely for many years and it's really sad to see something so tragic happen.

It's one thing to lose the vehicle... losing the life of a pilot is so, so much worse.

My thoughts and prayers are with all the folks at Virgin Galactic and the family and friends of the dead and injured crew members.

[Bigtime]

Ugh, terrible:

[Puppet Guy]

[Bigtime]

An interesting read from a guy who has followed the Virgin Galactic program rather closely, and was apparently there yesterday as SS2 suffered its failure:

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/10/...s-giant-leaps/

Sounds like there have been some real challenges, especially with scaling up the engine from SS1 to SS2, and having to change the propellent mix in the engine, which may have led to yesterdays accident. As this was the first flight trying it.