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Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane exploded and crashed during a test flight on Friday, killing one crew member and seriously injuring another, authorities said. The explosion came after the plane dropped away from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and fired up its hybrid rocket engine, said Stuart Witt, CEO and general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The blast scattered debris across a two-mile swath of the desert floor north of Mojave, which is about 95 miles (150 kilometers) outside Los Angeles. One of the two test pilots aboard the plane was killed, said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, who was among the officials dealing with the crash's aftermath. The other parachuted to the ground and was injured. That pilot was transferred to Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, California, according to Kern County Deputy Fire Chief Michael Cody. "We hope that the survivor will be just fine," Youngblood said during a news briefing. The pilots have not yet been identified, but both of them worked for Mojave-based Scaled Composites, according to Scaled's president, Kevin Mickey. Scaled has played a key role in developing and testing SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic had planned to use this SpaceShipTwo to fly passengers on suborbital trips to the edge of space, beginning as early as next year. A nearly identical rocket plane is already under construction inside a Mojave hangar. More than 700 customers, including celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber, have paid as much as $250,000 to take a ride. George T. Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's CEO, said the company would press on despite the setback. "Space is hard, and today was a tough day," Whitesides told reporters. "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, hard days like this. But we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who are working so hard on them to understand this and to move forward." Witt said Mojave's close-knit aviation community was hit hard by the tragedy. "When we have a mishap from the test community, we find that the test community is very small," he said. "We are human, and it hurts."
Toddlers get too much exercise, they wouldn't make good veal.
No matter what happens, no matter what my last words may end up being, I want everyone to claim that they were: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Aww, you guys rock. I feel the love... and the pitchforks and torches. Tingly!
Test pilots are inherently in a dangerous line of work. It's to be expected with unreliable equipment (no matter how advanced) meant mostly for hammering out the flaws until you reach the final product.
