Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2015

ASTRONAUTICS Two has first lost its two wings and then its fuselage started to disintegrate, it appears miraculous that the other pilot, the 43-year old Peter Siebold, managed to survive the crash. According to what he said a couple of weeks after the accident, when the space- plane began to break apart, he found him- self thrown clear of the wreckage still strapped into his seat, from which he man- aged to free himself shortly before his pa- rachute deployed automatically. In the meantime the speed must have signifi- cantly decreased, otherwise the pilot would not have survived. Until the exact causes of the disaster have been determined, the Virgin Galactic pro- gram will remain frozen, even if Branson is hoping to resume testing within 6 months, and even if in the meantime he will go ahead with the construction of a third space- plane, 65 percent of which has already been completed. However, it is highly likely that the first com- mercial flight will not be possible for at least the next 2 years. And to think that its maid- en flight was expected for the first half of 2015, with onboard the same Branson and at least one of his children. Even though the British tycoon is willing to refund all those who have bought one of the costly tickets, his main concern is the future of the Virgin Galactic program, which includes suborbital intercontinental flights capable of taking wealthy passengers from New York to Lon- don in less than 1 hour and from London to Sydney in few hours. Today it is impossible to establish when that ambitious project will be achieved, but given that the commercial space industry is worth something like 200 billion dollars, we can be sure that sooner or later we will see it realized. n B elow, one of the larger pieces of the SpaceShipTwo wreckage. Right, Sir Richard Bran- son holds a press conference at the Mojave Air and Space Port on the day after the tragic accident. [Virgin Galactic]