Saturday, November 1, 2014

Virgin Galactic crash


Virgin Galactic space ship two has suffered what they are describing as an "serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo".  Or in normal peoples language a crash.
Why people try and dress things up baffles me, anybody with a telly has seen it in bits scattered across the desert, calling it a loss or an anomaly isn't fooling anyone.
Getting into space actually isn't too difficult if you have an unlimited budget, NASA made a lot of trips into space with only two fatal space flights (three if you count X15 which technically went into space)
Two out of over a hundred isn't that bad, not a great accident rate it has to be admitted but space is dangerous, and the vehicles used to get there are complex and full of highly explosive stuff, so all in all not bad.
The hard part is going to be making it safe enough for Joe public.  I suspect we simply haven't reached the technological level yet to make it totally safe (it'll probably never be totally safe) 
To do what Virgin are trying to do is to be applauded, to make space affordable and realistic for the normal person, and who knows where it'll end?  Mars maybe? 
But when they get it working, if theres regular flights there will be accidents, with anything as complex as a space ship there are inevitably going to be accidents, Jumbo jets are pretty damm safe airplanes, but they still crash.
The big question is will Virgin survive the first fatal passenger crash......

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