Space Is Hard

A winged spaceship designed to take tourists on excursions beyond Earth's atmosphere broke up during a test flight Friday over the Mojave Desert, killing a pilot in the second fiery setback for commercial space travel in less than a week. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo blew apart after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, said Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the accident.

One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. The crash area was about 120 miles north of downtown Los Angeles and 20 miles from the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the mid-morning flight originated.

British billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, has been the front-runner in the fledgling race to give large numbers of paying civilians a suborbital ride that would let them experience weightlessness and see the Earth from the edge of space. Branson was expected to arrive in Mojave on Saturday, as were investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Branson released a statement Friday night saying it was "among the most difficult trips I have ever had to make" but that he wants to be "with the dedicated and hardworking people who are now in shock at this devastating loss”. "Space is hard — but worth it," Branson wrote. "We will persevere and move forward together." The accident occurred just as it seemed commercial space flights were near, after a period of development that lasted far longer than hundreds of prospective passengers had expected.

When Virgin Group licensed the technology from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who put $26 million into SpaceShipOne, Branson envisioned operating flights by 2007. In interviews last month, he talked about the first flight being next spring with his son. "It's a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space any time soon," said John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University. "There were a lot of people who believed that the technology to carry people is safely at hand."

Friday's flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rockets fire after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mothership or functioned as a glider after release. At 60 feet long, SpaceShipTwo featured two large windows for each of up to six passengers, one on the side and one overhead.

The accident's cause was not immediately known, nor was the altitude at which the break-up occurred. The first rocket-powered test flight peaked at about 10 miles above Earth. Commercial flights would go 62 miles or higher. One difference on this flight was the type of fuel. In May, Virgin Galactic announced that SpaceShipTwo would switch to a polymide-based fuel — a type of thermoplastic. It had been fueled with a type of rubber called HTPB.

Scaled Composites, the company building the spaceship for Virgin Galactic, had extensively tested the new fuel formulation on the ground, President Kevin Mickey said.

He characterized the new fuel as "a small nuance to the design." Officials said they had not noticed anything wrong before the flight. The problem happened about 50 minutes after takeoff and within minutes of the spaceship's release from its mother ship, said Stuart Witt, CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Virgin Galactic owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS of Abu Dhabi sells seats on each prospective journey for $250,000. The company says that "future astronauts," as it calls customers, include Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand. The company reports receiving $90 million from about 700 prospective passengers.

Former NASA top space scientist Alan Stern has seats to fly on Virgin Galactic and isn't rethinking his plans. "Let's not be Chicken Littles here," said Stern. "I want to be part of the opening of this future frontier." Friday's accident was the second this week involving private space flight. On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff in Virginia.

Virgin Galactic plans to launch space tourism flights from the quarter-billion-dollar Spaceport America in southern New Mexico once it finished developing its rocket ship. Taxpayers footed the bill to build the state-of-the-art hangar and runway in a remote stretch of desert in southern New Mexico as part of a plan devised by Branson and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Critics have long challenged the state's investment, questioning whether flights would ever get off the ground.

SpaceShipTwo is based on aerospace design maverick Burt Rutan's award-winning SpaceShipOne prototype, which became the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space in 2004.

"It's an enormously sad day for a company," Burt Rutan told The Associated Press in a phone interview from his home in Idaho, where he lives since retiring. Friday's death was not the first associated with the program.

During testing for the development of a rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo in July 2007, an explosion at the Mojave spaceport killed three workers and critically injured three others. A California Division of Occupational Safety and Health report said the blast occurred three seconds after the start of a cold-flow test of nitrous oxide, which is used in the propulsion system of SpaceShipTwo. The engine was not firing during that test.

Virgin Galactic & Scaled Composite

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company is reeling from the loss of SpaceShipTwo, which crashed in California's Mojave desert on Friday, killing one of its pilots and seriously injuring the other. Branson, a billionaire business mogul whose Virgin group of companies have ranged from music to airlines to mobile phones, founded Virgin Galactic ten years ago with the aim of offering flights to the edge of space for anyone who could pay the $250,000 price tag.

The future of Virgin's commercial suborbital flight program is unclear in the wake of the tragic accident. The 64-year-old Branson is not the only businessman in the space trade. The concept of space travel has proved an irresistible allure for many entrepreneurs who've made it in the tech world, and they have been spurred on by NASA's increasing reliance on private companies to conduct space missions. The industry has been rocked by SpaceShipTwo's crash coming just days after the explosion of an Orbital Sciences. commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station. But the race for commercial space travel continues.

ELON MUSK, The 43-year-old co-founder of PayPal and head of Tesla Motors launched Space Exploration Technologies Corp. in 2002 with the ultimate goal of developing the technology to allow humans to live on other planets. SpaceX, as it is known, designs, makes and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. In 2012, NASA hired SpaceX to deliver cargo and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station. The company's spacecraft have since made five trips to the International Space Station and back, including four official resupply missions. The Hawthorne, California company has over 3,000 employees and operates three spacecraft: Dragon, Falcon Heavy and Falcon 8. Its Dragon spacecraft is expected to begin manned missions in the next two to three years.

JEFF BEZOS, The 50-year-old co-founder of Amazon.com started Blue Origin in Kent, Washington, in 2000 to develop technology to make human access to space easier. It is currently focused on developing rocket-powered vertical takeoff and landing vehicles for access to the edge of space and beyond. As of 2012 Blue Origin had received $22 million from NASA. Its crew and cargo vehicle, called New Shepard, is designed to eventually take tourists to suborbit. Last month, United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. that launches unmanned rockets, picked Blue Origin to develop a rocket engine that could eventually replace the Russian rocket engine used in many American unmanned launches.

PAUL ALLEN, The Microsoft co-founder teamed with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan in 2004 on the experimental SpaceShipOne, which was launched from a special aircraft. It became the first privately financed, manned spacecraft to dash into space and later won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for accomplishing the feat twice in two weeks. More recently, the 61-year-old's Stratolaunch Systems, based in Hunstville, Alabama, is developing the world's biggest plane to help launch cargo and astronauts into space. Called Thunderbolt, it is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2018. Stratolaunch is working with Orbital Sciences and Rutan's Scaled Composites. SpaceShipTwo was piloted by Scaled Composites, under contract with Virgin Galactic, during this week's fatal crash.

JEFF GREASON, The rocket scientist and former Intel employee founded XCOR Aerospace in 1989. XCOR also is pursuing space tourism and hopes to conduct flight tests for its Lynx spaceship beginning in 2015. In September, XCOR was partner to the Federal Aviation Administration approving a commercial space launch license for Midland International Airport in Texas, where XCOR operates a research and development center. The 50-employee company is based at Mojave Air and Spaceport in Southern California and has built 13 different rocket engines and built and flown two manned rocket-powered aircraft — the EZ-Rocket and the X-Racer. Greason has served on the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

Virgin Galactic's experimental spaceship broke apart in flight over California's Mojave Desert after a device to slow the craft's descent prematurely deployed, federal investigators said Sunday. National Transportation Safety Board Acting Chairman Christopher Hart said that while no cause for Friday's crash of SpaceShipTwo has been determined, investigators found the "feathering" system — which rotates the tail to create drag — was activated before the craft reached the appropriate speed.

The system requires a two-step process to deploy. The co-pilot unlocked the system but Hart said the second step occurred "without being commanded." "What we know is that after it was unlocked, the feathers moved into the deploy position and two seconds later we saw disintegration," Hart said.

The investigation is months from being completed and pilot error, mechanical failure, the design and whether there was pressure to continue testing are among many things being looked at, Hart said.

"We are not edging toward anything, we're not ruling anything out," Hart said. "We are looking at all these issues to determine the root cause of this accident." The co-pilot Michael Alsbury, 39, was killed. Peter Siebold, 43, who piloted the mission, parachuted to the ground and is receiving treatments at a hospital for serious injuries.

Virgin Galactic — owned by billion Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS of Abu Dhabi — plans to fly passengers to altitudes more than 62 miles above Earth. The company sells seats on each prospective journey for $250,000. Branson had hoped to begin flights next year but said Saturday that the project won't resume until the cause of the accident is determined and the problems fixed. Hart said a review of footage from a camera mounted to the ceiling of the cockpit shows the co-pilot moving the feathering lever to the unlock position.

The feathering is a feature unique to the craft to help it slow as it re-enters the atmosphere. After being unlocked, a lever must be pulled to rotate the tail section toward a nearly vertical position to act as a rudder. After decelerating, the pilots reconfigure the tail section to its normal position so the craft can glide to Earth. Hart said the feathers activated at Mach 1.0, the speed of sound or 760 mph. They shouldn't have deployed until the craft had at least reached a speed of Mach 1.4, or more than 1,000 mph.

SpaceShipTwo tore apart Friday about 11 seconds after it detached from the underside of its jet-powered mother ship and fired its rocket engine for the test flight. Initial speculation was that an explosion occurred but Hart said the fuel and oxidizer tanks and rocket engine were found and showed no sign of being burned or breached.

Virgin Galactic CEO George White sides issued a statement Sunday to tamp down conjecture about the cause of the crash. "Now is not the time for speculation," he said.

"Now is the time to focus on all those affected by this tragic accident and to work with the experts at the NTSB, to get to the bottom of what happened on that tragic day, and to learn from it so that we can move forward safely with this important mission."

SpaceShipTwo has been under development for years and, like all space projects, has suffered setbacks. In 2007, an explosion killed three people on the ground and critically injured three others during a ground test in the development of a rocket engine.

Prior to Hart's announcement, Geoff Daly, an engineer who worked on the space shuttle, renewed criticism of Virgin Galactic's use of nitrous oxide to power the ship. The nitrous oxide is used with fuel to provide propulsion. Engineers had recently changed the fuel system, switching from a rubber-based fuel to one that used plastics. The new fuel had been tested on the ground but not in flight until Friday.

Daly was co-author of a critical report on the 2007 incident at Scaled Composites, the Northrop Grumman-owned designer of SpaceShipTwo. The report was critical of Virgin's claims that nitrous oxide was safe to use in engines for passenger flight, and it complained that the public was never given a full accounting of what happened.

In a June 2013 letter, Daly asked the FAA to put a hold on an experimental flight permit for SpaceShipTwo to ensure the safety of personnel on the ground and in the spacecraft. The FAA said it would look into his complaint, according to memos posted online, but Daly said no flights of SpaceShipTwo were halted.

A report by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health said the 2007 blast occurred three seconds after the start of a cold-flow test of nitrous oxide. The engine was not firing during the test at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Parallel universes supposedly really do exist, and due to the fact that they do, they impact and intermingle with one another through a restrained force of attraction, according to a team of researchers from both the University of California and also Griffith University.

The principle of parallel worlds has been existent in quantum knowledge for quite a while now but scientists only recently came up with an idea that suggests parallel universes all are existent and respond to each other instead of independently developing, according to several different news media sources. 

The collaboration that exists amid the various worlds that might possibly provide light to everything peculiar about how particles perform at the minuscule size is reported to be completed through a subtle repulsive power.

Quantum theory is considered to be extremely difficult to comprehend, and it exhibits strange occurrences, which seem to disregard the very rules of cause and effect as if to prove that idea. Nevertheless, the notion of several different intermingling parallel worlds just might clarify why such peculiar exchanges in quantum mechanics are observed by researchers, stated Science World Report. 

Dr. Howard Wiseman, who works as a professor of Physics at Griffith University explained that, in the commonly known numerous worlds interpretation of parallel universes, each lone universe twigs out into a horde of entirely new universes each time a quantum measurement occurs.

Therefore, this means that every single possibility is realized with every event that happens. In some parallel universes the asteroid that was thought to have wiped the dinosaurs from the Earth completely, instead totally missed the planet. In others, Abraham Lincoln was never struck down by an assassin’s bullet. 

However, doubters oppose the veracity of such other creations, because they believe such universes have no effect on our own universe in the least. Going by such a scale, the many relating worlds idea is totally different, even though its name sounds the same.

Dr. Wiseman and his colleagues suggested that the universe everyone lives in is only one in a colossal number of parallel universes. Some of them are just about identical to the one anyone reading this specific article dwells in, but the majority are extremely different. However, they are still just as real, contain accurately defined material goods and also constantly exist from end to end time.

Scientists believe that these parallel worlds branch out from a common collective power source where they obtain their strength of repulsion in the middle of nearby worlds that tends to make them more different. The splendor of the style is that if there was only one world the notion would then decrease down to solo mechanics. 

Yet, if there are a colossal number of parallel worlds, it duplicates quantum mechanics, explained Dr. Michael Hall, who works at Griffith University. By being in the middle, it is able to predict something that is not quantum or Newton’s theory either. 

The scientists working on this project think that by providing a fresh psychological photograph of quantum effects, it just might be helpful in preparation of experiments that are wanted to both test and exploit the quantum marvels.