2014 Virgin Galactic crash: Spaceflight company was warned of safety issues

A pilot was killed and another was seriously injured in a test flight in the Mojave Desert on Friday, after Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed.

12:50 03 November 2014

The 2014 Virgin Galactic crash, which led to the death of one pilot, 'could have been avoided' according to experts.

 

They say that Virgin Galactic was given warnings several years ago about the danger of its rockets but chose to ignore cautions. On Friday, the SpaceShipTwo test flight in Mojave Desert, which also seriously injured another pilot, broke up inflight. 

 

Carolynne Campbell-Knight, an expert on rocket propulsion at the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) contacted Sir Richard Branson’s company in 2009 or 2010, after three engineers were killed in the explosion during the testing of a rocket engine on the ground in 2007. 

 

Meanwhile, Sir Richard’s team said that they did not ignore safety warnings. In a statement, they said: "At Virgin Galactic, we are dedicated to opening the space frontier, while keeping safety as our 'North Star'. This has guided every decision we have made over the past decade, and any suggestion to the contrary is categorically untrue.” 

 

Tom Bower, an investigative journalist and Sir Richard’s biographer, told the BBC’s Today programme: “All the engineers in California working on the project I’ve spoken to said it was very dangerous, just a few weeks ago the last of many of the Virgin Galactic engineers walked out of the factory and said he’d never work there again.”

Virgin Galactic said: "We understand that everyone is anxious to understand what happened on Friday; certainly no one wants to know more than we do.

"However, as we have made clear, Virgin Galactic is not in a position to comment on the incident itself or the test flight. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is in charge of the investigation and we are co-operating fully with their work. All inquiries should be directed to them."