Features editor
Last week’s commercial spaceflight losses remind us of the difficulties and risks of space, but they don’t necessarily mean the end of space tourism; just the beginnings of more tests and a wait to see whether prospective passengers are discouraged.
Rocket science, contrary to the well-worn cliche, is quite simple. It’s mostly combustion chemistry and thermodynamics, plus Newtonian mechanics. It’s rocket engineering that’s hard.
The loss of the Scaled Composites Space Ship Two, the proposed carrier for Virgin Galactic’s space tourism thrill-rides, with the tragic death of test pilot Michael Asbury brought that fact home to us at the weekend. Combined with the explosion of the Antares rocket shortly after launch last week, it reminded us that space is hard, and it’s also dangerous.

This is something that everyone used to know. It’s easy for us to forget, when launches of vehicles like Ariane are usually successful, how tricky it is to balance a narrow vertical cylinder on top of a ball of burning gas and guide its payload into orbit, let alone to propel a capsule capable of supporting life beyond the atmosphere; but in the early days of the space race, failures were more common than successes and everyone knew the odds were stacked against the rocketeers. It gives you a renewed respect for the bravery of the first cosmonauts and astronauts, sitting up there on what Alan Shepard, pilot of Mercury mission Friendship 7, described pointedly as ‘a machine with 270,000 moving parts, every one of which was built by the lowest bidder.’
So will the loss of Space Ship Two mean the end for space tourism? We can’t say until we know what went wrong and why. Early conjecture that the engine, which was using a new solid fuel system after the original rubber fuel proved incapable of sending the machine into space, had exploded has proved incorrect, as both engine and oxidiser tank were found intact; the fault now appears to have been with the ’feathering’ system which changes the vehicle’s aerodynamics and decelerates it on reentry into the atmosphere, allowing it to land without retrorockets. This was the most innovative part of Scaled founder Burt Rutan’s design, and was vital for keeping the cost of Space Ship Two and its X-Prize winning predecessor low.
What we don’t know yet is why the system failed. It appears to have been unlocked by Alsbury while the ship was travelling too slowly but it then deployed without a control input from the pilot, and it is yet to be determined whether that was a failure of the control system, an event linked to aerodynamics or some other fault.The crash is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which oversees passenger vehicles; the fist time that the board has led the investigation of a spaceship crash, although it was involved in the invesitgation of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Once its investigation is complete, which will include a report on the causes of the crash and safety recommendations for future flights, it’ll be up to the US government agency, the Federal Aviation Authority, to decide whether Scaled and Virgin will be certified to carry passengers.

So it’s certain that Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight will be delayed while more trials take place; more delays, after Virgin chief Richard Branson’s bullish and decreasingly believable protestations that passenger flights will begin within a year which he’s now been making since 2007. It could be that Branson is now one of the company’s biggest liabilities. There is often a suspicion that some of Virgin’s initiatives are more about feeding his ego than anything else, and that he frequently promises more than his organisation is equipped to deliver.
For the Scaled team, the challenge is to push the frontiers of technology: to get it to work in the way Rutan and his fellow engineers believed it would, and for the pilots, to gain coveted ’astronaut’s wings’. They will undoubtedly want to keep going. And it certainly seems not to have discouraged Virgin’s customers so far; the company has reported that only 20 of the 700 prospective fliers who had paid deposits have asked for a refund. Branson claimed that the company was still receiving bookings after the crash; he clearly needs this to happen, because even 700 full fares for his glorified roller-coaster ride (and that’s all Virgin Galactic is; even its most ardent supporters can’t argue that it’s anything to do with exploration) won’t be sufficient for him to recoup his personal investment in the project; Virgin Group has pumped some $100million into Virgin Galactic.
Other space tourism operations haven’t said anything, but then none of them are even testing a full-scale vehicle in flight. As for commercial space, as it doesn’t use Scaled’s technologies or anything like them, the failure of Space Ship Two will be saddening but nothing more; SpaceX’s crewed missions to the ISS using its Dragon capsule remain dependent on its own technology trials.
It’s been said that space tourism will have an important influence on the future of crewed spaceflight, and certainly Rutan proved that a private company can find innovations in space vehicles that NASA couldn’t. But we’ll have to wait and see whether the effects of the Space Ship Two crash dampen the enthusiasm of the very rich to take on the freshly-emphasised risk of riding an explosion for kicks. Because ultimately, that’s what’ll determine whether space flight can make money for investors, and that’s the sole key to the future of Virgin Galactic.
Is the term ‘space’ tourism really appropriate? – these craft are little more than high-flying aeroplanes.
Even an orbital flight would be essentially just a ‘parking’ manoeuvre.
Maybe Virgin could switch some of their huge resources to an easier target like Supergun satellite launching. Two bunches of students at the University of Surrey are trying to come up with a design which would – unlike previous attempts – actually work, and work out more economical for getting small satellites into space – and get them into space in the orbit they want, at the time they want it, unlike the piggyback rocket launchers.
It is important to recognize that this is more than space tourism, it is the ability of non-astronauts to see this beautiful blue planet from above – that have been a soul-developing experience for most who have flown in space. We humans are evolving from the thinking but fearful Homo sapiens into the loving Homo spiritus and such an experience as this sort of flight should make some travelers switch their opinion of who we are and why we are here. In light of that possibility this is all worth the risk!
Motor Cars were only for the very rich to start with.
“…his glorified roller-coaster ride (and that’s all Virgin Galactic is; even its most ardent supporters can’t argue that it’s anything to do with exploration) ”
Well said!
This is about pushing boundaries, achieving what has never been achieved, there will always be sceptics, and there will always be supporters in this world. If Virgin Galactic is successful, then there will be a customer base, for that you can be certain. It may be for the privileged few, but weren’t we all sad to see Concorde grounded, and was that not just a feat of engineering brilliance, which was achieved just because ‘we could’? There will always be a desire to keep pushing the boundaries, and behind each innovation or invention, is engineering. Long may it continue.
Like most ‘experimental’ projects, it should be scrapped immediately, lessons learned and the next generation of reusable orbit capable spacecraft developed, maybe using the new Sabre engine if it proves viable.
As for ‘tourists’. This should be treated as the gimmick it surely is and full airworthiness certification status be achieved before any ‘paying’ passengers are allowed.
Tony – Cars run in two dimensions. Inherently less risky than three…
Jet travel had its tragedies the one that springs to mind was the DH Comet. 2 in flight break ups leading to the loss of all onboard. Did the engineers give up ? No, now milions fly every year on safe and effective and mature technology Airbus and Boeings. So shall it be with spaceplane spaceflight. We are currently in the pioneer phase with this and crashes are to be expected.
Imagine what might have happened had the ‘Flyer’ crashed and the 2 brothers that designed gave up and went back to making bikes.