Jeff Foust has an update on why SpaceShipTwo remained in the shop while its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft was rolled out on Monday. Apparently, it’s been sitting there at 70 percent complete for the past year while the company thoroughly investigated an explosion that claimed the lives of three workers. Foust quotes designer Burt Rutan as saying:
“We have not worked on SpaceShipTwo in a year because there’s a possibility that the propulsion system would be markedly different and we’d be building things that we would have to scrap.”
Rutan declined to elaborate on technical matters beyond saying that the accident investigation is resulting in “a lot” of changes to the suborbital vehicle. He also said that report on the July 26, 2007 explosion would be released soon.
The comments are in sharp contrast to remarks made by X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, who immediately after the accident publicly claimed that the explosion was unrelated to spaceflight and had no bearing on the safety of the vehicle that Scaled Composites is building for Virgin Galactic.
“This was an industrial accident. This has nothing to do with spaceflight,” Diamandis told the Associated Press. “I have complete confidence that they are building a safe and robust spaceship.”
The conclusion seemed premature given that an investigation wasn’t even underway yet. Three people lay dead while another three were hospitalized. One would like to think they had suffered and died for something, such as advancing human spaceflight.
Rutan’s remarks also cast recent comments by Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn in a new light. In an interview with The Independent, Whitehorn said that SpaceShipTwo will be “thousands of times safer than any previous human flights into space.” Although this may ultimately prove to be true, the claim seems premature given that Rutan and his team are still absorbing the lessons of last year’s fatal blast. Such judgments can only be made over time after many flights. SpaceShipTwo has yet to make a single one.
The extent of any changes in the propulsion system raises some interesting issues, especially for Virgin Galactic’s wealthy clients. If the system is significantly different from the one flown on the spacecraft’s smaller prototype, SpaceShipOne, it could be safer. However, a major redesign also could introduce uncertainties and risks associated with testing a greatly modified engine.
It will be interesting to see what the investigation has found. A full accounting of the accident and the steps taken to correct problems is essential for a suborbital tourism industry that has yet to fly a single paying passenger.
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