SpaceShipTwo Loss: A Harsh Reality Check

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Friday’s loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was as inevitable was it was tragic. If anyone believes-as I think some do-that attaching “tourism” to space flight somehow erases the risk of flight beyond the atmosphere, this accident should disabuse them of that notion. But I wonder if it will.

Promoting space tourism has gotten quite beyond the cottage industry it once was and has morphed into a odd mixture of NASA bashing and unbridled celebration of what private enterprise can accomplish when unfettered by government meddling. To be fair, private enterprise has accomplished impressive feats in space launches. The SpaceShipTwo accident doesn’t diminish that much, in my view, nor does Orbital’s vehicle loss in Wallops Island on Tuesday. Rockets blow up sometimes. They always have and they always will.

But the implication of Virgin Galactic’s accident are just a little different, aren’t they? This was a proposed passenger spacecraft, not an inert load of scientific gear and freeze-dried food. Virgin’s Galactic’s biggest challenge might not be figuring out what happened and fixing it, but how to handle the after-accident PR. Specifically, how the public discussion of risk is carried out going forward. In some ways, that may be one beneficial result of this accident, giving those ready to sign up for such flights a clearer signal about the risk involved.

This is something I think Richard Branson has not done very well. I don’t know the details of the Virgin Galactic space ride sales pitch, but in the public discourse, Branson has affected the breezy confidence of the irrepressible, successful entrepreneur. To hear him speak of how the common man-at least the common man with $200,000 to spare-should not be denied space is to be exposed to infectious enthusiasm unconstrained by the fact that the chances of getting killed doing it are actually not that low. One particular quote from him caught my eye: “It took us a lot longer to build rockets that we felt completely comfortable with.”

I can think of a lot of ways to describe rockets and the engines that power them, but complete comfort wouldn’t be among them. Acceptable risk, yes. Reasonable risk, OK. But not comfort. And the words do matter because some may assume that smart as he is, Sir Richard would never expose his passengers to undue risk. There’s nothing like a vehicle loss to recalibrate that misperception. Or perhaps we can just assume that the people smart enough to have the 200 grand are also smart enough to understand the risk. Well, what the heck, there aren’t that many of them. If Branson learns anything from this, it may be that the marvels ofentrepreneurship and opportunity are quite capable of being reduced to smoking rubble by the hazards inherent in fooling around with rockets. Money and brashness don’t alter that.

Still, as late as Saturday morning, Branson was unbowed, issuing this quote: “This is the biggest test program ever carried out in commercial aviation history precisely to insure that this never happens to the public.” The “biggest” claim may be arguable when measured against big airline cert projects like the 747, but suggesting an experimental rocket plane can be made safe and predictable enough to protect the unsuspecting public strikes me as ridiculous and he shouldn’t be saying it.

As a metric, Virgin Galactic said the Friday flight was the 35th time the vehicle had flown in free flight. That’s not necessarily powered flight, but free of the launch ship. So best case, it’s one vehicle loss in 35 flights or about 3 percent. For the Space Shuttle, NASA had two vehicle losses in 135 flights or about half the risk thus far for Virgin. You can put your own value on that relative risk, but compared to other kinds of risk, I consider it relatively high. So in 100 flights, if Virgin gets that far, we shouldn’t be surprised to see another vehicle loss, possibly with passengers aboard.I wonder if the well-heeled thrill seekers who have bought tickets have even a foggy grasp of this.

We can assume that in its own self-interest and that of its customers, Virgin has done everything it can to minimize the risk. But do we know this in actual fact? And that’s why the after-accident information flow will be important. If this accident isn’t to seriously dent the space tourism concept, Virgin ought to make the investigation as completely transparent and public as is possible. This will prove an interesting challenge for the NTSB, too. Heretofore, it has made post-accident safety recommendations based in part upon internationally accepted certification, operational and training standards. In this accident, no such thing exists. They’re dealing with an experimental rocket.

The history of space flight accidents has shown us that they have often been the result of internal management and culture shortcomings, not strictly unforeseen technical issues. And Virgin has a cross to bear that NASA didn’t: proving that the balance between profit motive and acceptable risk was rightly, or at least reasonably, calculated.

Doing that is less for the public than the body politic, because if Congress gets involved and directs the FAA toward more involvement in space tourism, you might just as well strike the phrase from your vocabulary. It will probably just disappear.

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