The spacecraft space tourism Virgin crashes on a flight … – HOME

TV image of wreckage. / AP

One person has died and at least one has been seriously hurt in the crash on Friday a test flight of the spacecraft space tourism company Virgin. The Virgin Galactic Space Ship Two crashed during a test flight in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles, California. “During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly which resulted in the loss of SpaceShipTwo” Virgin Galactic said in a message via Twitter. It was the test flight number 35, the company said.

The accident is the second of an apparatus of the fledgling private aerospace industry this week, raising short-term doubts about plans private space travel, which should be a reality this year and 2015. The chairman of Virgin, Richard Branson, headed Friday toward Mojave, where he is expected to arrive on Saturday morning.

At a press conference two hours after the accident, the chief executive of the Port Mojave Aerospace, Sutart Witt said he saw nothing wrong with the flight of SpaceShipTwo. Just after starting their engines stopped being there. The next thing I knew was that something had crashed in the desert. “There was an explosion,” Witt, who sent words of encouragement to families and facility workers said

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The SpaceShipTwo, on a test flight in 2013. / AP

The vehicle was launched at 9:20 am local time, with the aircraft White Knight Two, from which it separated as planned to fly independently, as he was telling the Virgin company in the social network. The ship was released at 10.10, according to the account of Witt. Two minutes later, something happened. The company tweeted: “Ignition The Space Ship Two is again flying rocket-powered”. The next tweet reported an “anomaly” in flight. The plane landed safely tow.

The SpaceShipTwo is towed up to 14,000 meters by the mother aircraft. At that point, separates and ignites its engines to keep climbing. Kevin Mickey, president of Scaled Composites, said the engine flew with a combination of fuel had been tested on three previous occasions in flight and “often” ground successfully.

More than 500 people had already booked seats on these flights, for which tickets will cost $ 200,000, says Agence France Presse. It is an experience for millionaires a few minutes on the edge of the stratosphere in a device that can take hasa six passengers.

The Space Ship Two is the commercial version of Space Ship One Virgin, the first commercial apparatus that reached space in 2004. The company had planned to begin passenger flights this year.

The crash Virgin Atlantic came two days after the company Orbital Sciences rocket lost a few seconds off. Orbital Sciences is within the ten companies competing in the private aeroespacila business. The Antares rocket, designed to carry satellites into space and perform cargo missions for NASA, with whom he had already made a contract, nothing crashed after takeoff in Virginia. The company’s shares tumbled Wednesday after the accident. The tragedy of yesterday with Virgin Galactic adds even more doubt to the immediate future of the private aerospace business.

In this battle competing companies SpaceX, Blue Origin and XCOR Aerospace and Virgin Galactic with Orbital.