It’s heartbreaking to read the news of Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Two failure on it’s first powered test-flight. From the news so far one of the crew managed to eject and is badly hurt but alive while the other died in the crash.
It’s a grim reminder of the dangers of space flight and thoughts go out to all of the people working on the project and the families of the crew members who have lost loved ones.
Space technology is still in it’s relative infancy and it’s important to remember that humans have only been doing this for around fifty years and the private space industry is only perhaps ten years old.
Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites were pioneers in this new era of private space flight, using new designs and technologies and that always carries a substantial risk. That doesn’t mean that such things shouldn’t be tried however, humans are at heart risk takers and it is only by undertaking such endeavors that we grow and develop as a species.
I look forward to seeing Virgin Galactic overcoming this setback and establishing themselves as a real twenty-first century company.
Per ardua ad astra
