Another Commercial Space disaster, this one manned
 

Virgin galactic just reported they lost SpaceShip 2, manned with 2 pilots. Their status is unknown at this time, but chutes were sighted over the Mojave.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/vir...t-test-n238376

CHP is now reporting 1 fatality, 1 major injury.

Damn...hope that the crew made it out alright.

From space rush to sage brush. A lousy week for space travel. :dead:

http://media.turnto23.com/photo/2014....0_640_480.PNG

Damn, that's bad news. May he RIP and I hope the other one recovers.

:timeout:VG ain't virgin no more.

We can only hope that Justin Beber will have the first ride. :D

:hmmm:


:nope:

Don't you think it's a bit too soon to be joking about this?

Never too soon for Bieber.

Sad, but it's not unexpected. Flight testing has never been and never will be risk free.

I just hope that this week's incidents won't put to big a drag on commercial space programs.

I guess suborbital flight still counts as space flight.

It's a gradual process.
Gone are the times when America and Russia built a huge single use rocket and blasted things directly into space.
Virgin Galactic is developing a ''space plane'' that can fly up there, not ride a booster rocket like the shuttle. To eventually move things into orbit with half the fuel of a shuttle or Soyuz needed.

I think that you still need to reach orbit in order to deliver anything there.

Meaning that the current space plane by Virgin has very little value apart from getting tourists into "space".

That said, maybe some one will make a working space plane, there were many projects (including ones by USSR/Russia) but so far all of them failed.

Example:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...С%29.png

Fair enough :D