Virgin Galactic spaceship crashes during California test flight.

[astr0144]

Virgin Galactic spaceship crashes during California test flight.

Halloween has been a bad day for me today and also Richard Branson..

- A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, officials said.

Two pilots were aboard the spaceship, which was undergoing its first powered test flight since January. It was not immediately known if they were able to parachute to safety.

More than 800 people have paid or put down deposits to fly aboard the spaceship, which is carried to an altitude of about 45,000 feet and released. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to about 62 miles (100 km) high, giving passengers a view of the planet set against the blackness of space and a few minutes of weightlessness.

The spaceship is based on a prototype, called SpaceShipOne, which 10 years ago won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately developed manned spacecraft to fly in space.

Friday's test was to be the spaceship's first powered test flight since January. In May, Virgin Galactic and spaceship developer Scaled Composites, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp, switched to an alternative plastic-type of fuel grain for the hybrid rocket motor.


http://news.yahoo.com/virgin-galactic-spaceship-crashes-during-california-test-flight-184004824--finance.html

[zorgon]

Rule #1 

NEVER book a flight on the prototypes, wait till they get the bugs out.

[Pimander]

Will the civilians in space plans continue to be thwarted?  This is not the first time....