LOS ANGELES (AP) -- As a
female voice coos, "Welcome to space," six passengers in skintight
spacesuits unbuckle their seat belts and somersault in zero gravity,
occasionally peeking back at Earth through the private spaceship's large
portholes.
Virgin Galactic showed off
this animated video promoting the weightless joys of commercial space travel at
a trade show for experimental aircraft last month. But the excitement was
overshadowed three days later when a deadly
flash explosion rocked a Mojave Desert facility where top-secret tests were
under way for Virgin's
yet-unbuilt spaceship.
The accident at the remote
site run by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan rattled the fledgling space
tourism industry, which has enjoyed a honeymoon period since 2004 when Rutan
launched SpaceShipOne, the first private manned rocket into space.
It also offered insight
into how two pioneering companies that forged an unlikely partnership two years
ago to fly civilians to space reacted to the tragedy. In a reversal of roles,
Richard Branson's publicity-seeking Virgin Galactic kept a low profile while
its usually silent partner, Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC, took to the Internet
to mourn its workers.
Some space experts believe
Virgin Galactic is following the right strategy because the accident was of an
industrial nature and not directly related to spaceflight. But eventually
customers and the public will demand answers, they say.
"It's natural for a
company to not be out there talking immediately afterward. I don't think that
would be good PR," said Kathleen Allen of the University of Southern
California's Marshall School of Business, who follows the commercial space
industry.
Virgin Galactic did
privately contact its prized customers known as founders, who have paid the
full $200,000 to be among the first to experience four minutes of
weightlessness.
Stephen Attenborough,
Virgin Galactic's astronaut liaison, reassured the founders in an e-mail that
the accident's impact on the first
commercial spaceflights -- expected in late 2009 or 2010 -- will be "minimal"
and that it was "business as usual."
In a telephone interview,
Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said it is not the company's place to
comment because the blast occurred in Rutan's backyard. He added that four new
customers have signed up since the mishap and none of the astronauts-in-waiting
has asked for a refund.
"It hasn't affected
Virgin Galactic as a business at all," Whitehorn said. "It hasn't put
a stop to anything."
The Mojave accident invoked
memories of NASA's
Apollo 1 tragedy 40 years ago in which three astronauts were killed in a
flash fire during a routine launch pad test. The accident forced NASA to
temporarily halt its space race with the Soviet Union and make design changes
that led to the successful moon landings.
In Scaled's case, three
technicians died and three others were critically injured while performing a
routine cold-flow test of nitrous oxide that did not involve a rocket firing.
The company, which has done the test numerous times before without a problem,
uses the chemical as an oxidizer in its spaceship's hybrid rocket motor.
California occupational
safety regulators are investigating the July 26 explosion and have six months
to complete a report.
The first fatalities of the
new space race stunned the commercial space community, which until now has
spoken about risks in abstract terms.
Exactly how the accident
will affect other companies building their own spaceships is unclear since most
are working on different propulsion technologies. However, the Personal
Spaceflight Federation, made up of more than a dozen private space companies,
pledged to plow ahead despite the tragedy.
Before the accident, hardly
anything was known about Scaled's progress on its suborbital spaceship program.
Afterward, Rutan acknowledged for the first time the company was testing a
propellent system for SpaceShipTwo, the successor to SpaceShipOne. Many details
about the program are still unknown, including how far along Scaled is.
Rutan also opened up a bit
about his relationship with Virgin, calling it "clumsy" as he
explained Scaled's silence.
"This whole program
for Richard Branson's company is a program that's clumsy for us, because it's
announced but not unveiled," Rutan said on July 26. "So we have for a
year and a half here been not answering any questions at all about the program."
Rutan did not respond to
e-mails seeking additional comment.
Scaled has since shed some
of its stoic image. Its technical Web site was transformed into a virtual
shrine for the three rocket workers killed in the line of duty. It set up a
memorial fund, posted poignant online remembrances and gave updates on
funeral arrangements and conditions of the injured, who are expected to
survive.
Scaled also sought outside
experts to determine what went wrong and vowed to share lessons learned with
the industry to prevent another accident.
"Burt is taking it
hard because it's the first time he's lost people. There is a feeling of shock
that some of his friends died," said space business consultant Thomas
Matula.
Virgin Galactic reacted to
the accident by posting a three-line condolence message on its Web site under
the heading "Mojave Incident." Its unusual public silence caused some
in the British press to speculate about its future and prompted Whitehorn to
write a rebuttal in London's Evening Standard newspaper.
Virgin Galactic's relative
silence is a far cry from its publicity blitz at the Experimental Aircraft Association
trade show in Oshkosh, Wis.
Whitehorn talked about the
ease of a Virgin
Galactic spaceflight. "You don't have to learn to speak Russian or
train for six months in order to go on SpaceShipTwo," he said.
Alex Tai, Virgin Galactic
vice president of operations, aired a 5-minute video of a "five-star"
spaceflight experience and answered questions about safety.
Tai gushed about
SpaceShipTwo's hybrid rocket motor: "We know it's going to be the safest
way to go into space. There's no moving parts in it, which means it's pretty
much impossible for that thing to fail."
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