aviatorhi

As above, multiple sources putting it out. Appears one chute was seen after an in flight explosion.

Yoda2

"Back to the drawing board Ollie" Bad week for aviation...

Pogey Bait

I don't quite know where to put this...

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Has Crashed, Possible Casualties

Adlerdriver

Anyone know what kind of escape system (if any) they've got on that thing?

Packrat

I'm not a Sir Dick fan by any means, but this kind of endeavor always entails a large dose of risk. After all, consider the issues the Apollo program had from the Apollo 1 pad fire to the Apollo 13 debacle.

Condolences to the families of the fallen.

cardiomd

Bad week for rocketry.

iceman49

DEVELOPING: Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Two Crashes During Test Flight

cardiomd

Preliminary reports are pointing to another Challenger/Columbia scenario where all of the engineers "know" what happened as soon as it happened, because it had nearly happened before, tried to warn management (a few of the engineers wrote to FAA??), but they went ahead anyway. Anybody here know anybody on the VG team and can provide some insight?

DC8DRIVER

Yes. I know one of the other VG pilots fairly well.

So sorry to say that, right now, they are just a bit busy consoling Mike Alsbury's family and making arrangements for the funeral to be answering the wild accusations of the conspiracy theorists right now. Maybe give them a couple more days before diving in and accusing their team of reckless endangerment and idiocy.

They have some pretty smart guys there and, no doubt they have a good idea of what happened. The whole team is devastated and to imply that there was some known flaw in their safety protocols is a ballsy accusation. If you really want to dig right down to the bottom of this issue, realize that - in addition to the fact that they have the obvious lessons from the NASA accidents, and in addition to the fact that they have a significant financial incentive NOT to screw up - this team is a very tight group that would NEVER place safety anywhere other than at the top of the list.

If you want something to do with the idle time that you seem to have on your hands, maybe you could consider donating to Mike's family fund.

To quote from the funding page:

"Michael (Mike) Alsbury, Test Pilot and Project Engineer for Scaled Composites, passed away on October 31, 2014 due to an anomaly during flight test. Mike was a husband, a father of two small children (ages 10 and 7), amazing friend and co-worker. Mike had worked with Scaled for over 15 years. This is a tragic loss that will leave a void in Mike’s family, the Scaled family, and the surrounding community for years to come. We would like to do anything we can to support Michelle and his two children."

Mike Alsbury Memorial Fund by Scaled Family - GoFundMe

Thanks in advance for helping them out.

8

cardiomd

?? Did he not have life insurance?? As a test pilot?

Is VG not going to take good care of him and his family after 15 years of service?

Not "ballsy accusations" but curiosity. Where did anybody say "reckless endangerment?" From extensive NASA accounts, insider accounts, and consensus picture of the two disasters I mentioned I would argue that what you say is not true in those scenarios.

This is a well-funded project by a conglomerate, and soliciting small donations for $50k is odd. Look at the hate that a pilot got on these boards trying to get some funds for his education in a similar fashion.