…without it being administered by imbeciles.

…without it being administered by imbeciles.

…without it being administered by imbeciles.

Allison Gatlin has the latest on the test explosion in Mojave. There are quotes from Jeff Foust and Brett Alexander, including this one, with which I agree:

“Because of the nature of this accident, I think that there will be limited media attention from here on out of this accident,” Foust said. “I suspect that you’ll see a lot more coverage over the next few days of NASA’s peccadilloes – intoxicated astronauts and sabotaged computers – than you will of this accident. As a result, this is going to be out of the general public’s minds pretty quickly, outside of those directly affected by the accident.”

It’s ironic and amusing that NASA’s latest foibles may knock the biggest accident to affect NewSpace off the headlines, but I think he’s right.

[Update in the evening]

Aaaarrrgghhh…

This is one of my biggest pet peeves:

“Today, as we are focused on the human side of this mishap we can’t loose sight of what it is we choose to do and to whom we serve,” airport General Manager Stu Witt said Friday.

It’s bad enough when people do it on unedited internet fora, but you’d think that professional editors and reporters could get it right. I wonder if it’s going to become the accepted spelling, because we can no longer hold back the tide of ignorance?

And yes, I know it’s confusing, as demonstrated a few grafs later:

“Our nation enjoys the safest transportation system the world has known, largely because people like the ones who populate the companies engaged in systems research and testing at Mojave, Edwards and China Lake choose this location to practice their craft,” Witt said.

Same pronunciation, different spelling. Yes, English has idiosyncratic spelling conventions. But again, professional writers and editors are paid to know the difference.

When I saw Glenn Reynolds in Dallas at the ISDC in May, he mentioned to me that he’d been reading a review copy of Rocketeers on the airplane, to prepare for a review he was going to write for the Wall Street Journal in conjunction with its release. Well, he was (as usual) true to his word (subscription only, though). As Clark Lindsey notes, the Powerline guys have an excerpt for the subscription challenged.

I haven’t said anything about the “drunk astronauts” story, but I do think that it epitomizes the atrocious state of reporting on space (and any technical subject), in which it becomes sensationalized and drained of reality. Everyone assumes that the two incidents referred to were Shuttle launches, when the word I get is that it was a T-38 and a Soyuz flight. And of course it has become inflated from two (anecdotal) incidents to everyone doing shooters before each Shuttle flight. The real story, as Jim Oberg points out in this interview with a terminally clueless BBC reporter, is the special treatment of astronauts, and the (lack of sufficient) power of the flight surgeons (at least in their minds) to ground them. Of course, this is a tough problem, as we saw in the Nowak case.

There is a natural antipathy between the astronauts and the flight surgeons. From an astronaut’s point of view, an encounter with the latter can’t have a good outcome. At best, it can be a neutral one. The default is that one’s flight readiness is go. A flight surgeon can’t improve that–they can only change it for the worse. If one is sick enough to need to get permission to go, it’s unlikely to happen, since there are many trained backups, even for a given mission, who are fine. Recall Apollo XIII, when Ken Mattingly had to be replaced by Jack Swigert because he had merely been exposed to German measles, due to concern that he might come down with it during the mission. He ended up not getting them, and while the decision made sense, he had to feel frustrated (though obviously not as much as he would have had the mission been successful).

It’s not a new problem, and it’s not one likely to go away, but it would help if the media would treat it seriously. Not to mention soberly.

…to Glen May. He was a lifelong rocketeer.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Dan Schrimpsher has more.

And Jim Bennett notes via private correspondence:

You will remember the scenes in The Right Stuff at the funerals of the test pilots; the Navy Hymn was always sung. This version includes the last verse, for space travellers, written by [Annapolis graduate] Robert Heinlein in 1947.

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd

Brian Dunbar has the 13th one up. I’m sure there’s no relationship between this and yesterday’s bad news, though.

No, I don’t know any more than anyone else, but I fear very much that it’s someone I (and we) know. There aren’t that many people (though there are quite a few) developing and testing rocket engines in Mojave. An exploding nitrogen tank doesn’t really narrow it down–I imagine that everyone (including the hybrid folks) are using those for blowdown pressurization systems.

Between this, and the reported problems with drunk astronauts and sabotaged equipment on ISS, it’s been a very bad day for the space business.

I’ll update as I get information.

[Update]

Now the report is that it was Scaled. They were developing their own (hybrid–safe, right?) engine for SpaceShipTwo, though they had no previous propulsion experience. It’s selfish of me, because he’s the only one I know, but I hope that George Whittinghill (who was overseeing the project for Virgin Galactic) wasn’t there. And this is an interesting development in light of Northrop Grumman’s latest acquisition.

And this will certainly be a hot topic at AirVenture…

[Update at 8 PM EDT]

Here’s the story. So we don’t know if it was an overpressurization, or not.

There’s less detail in it than the story originally reported on Fox News Channel.

Continuing to look for coverage.

[Another update a few minutes later]

This makes more sense. I’m hearing about a nitrous oxide flash explosion. That’s probably what the early reports meant when they said a “nitrogen tank exploded.” Nitrous is the oxidizer for the hybrid engine. One of those cases where laughing gas is no laughing matter. And again, evidence that hybrids are not quite as safe as advertised. Von Braun had a saying: “There’s no such thing as a foolproof system, because fools are too ingenious.” It will be interesting to see the post mortem and accident report on this one.

One interesting note. If this had been in flight, the NTSB and FAA would have been involved in the investigation. But I’m not sure that there is any legal requirement for a federal investigation into it, since it happened on the ground. I wonder if Scaled will ask for one? Certainly, it will be a factor in getting a launch license from AST now.

[8:20 PM EDT update]

Jeff Foust has a link roundup of local news reports.

[Update five minutes later]

As Jim Bennett points out in email, Jim Oberstar will make a lot of hay out of this, and no doubt demand more regulation, even though it was a developmental accident.

Gary Hudson emails that it’s a black day for the business. Just coincidence, of course, but a 300 point drop in the Dow doesn’t detract from the gloom.

Also, I now know the name of one of the fatalities, but it’s for Scaled to make that announcement, not me. No one I know, but someone that I’m sure that many there know, and will miss.

[Update a few minutes later]

The pictures coming in look amazingly devastating. Apparently two tanks blew. As Gary Hudson points out (again in email), and most people are unaware, nitrous oxide can be a monopropellant, under the right circumstances. As earlier noted, calling it “laughing gas” can be quite misleading, but it’s been overhyped for its safety partly by using that name.

I suspect that this is a major setback for Virgin Galactic, because they may have to go back to the drawing board for propulsion, for PR reasons if nothing else. On the other hand, it could be good news for some of the other propulsion providers. On the gripping hand, it wouldn’t necessarily take that long to come up with a good liquid engine for the system, if Burt and Richard Branson are willing to go that route now.

[Update after 9 PM EDT]

CNN has a story up now, but not much new, and no comment yet from Scaled. This is in fact probably the biggest disaster in the company’s history, and they may not have had a good PR plan in place to deal with it, though you’d like to think they would, given the nature of the business they’re in. There was a session at the conference this past weekend on this very topic–how to prepare for such an eventuality.

[Update at 10:30 PM EDT]

Jim Bennett, founder and former president of the American Rocket Company (among other things), emails:

Unless it was on a test stand during a firing, it wasn’t a hybrid system failure, it was a materials handling accident. The question will probably be, were they following the known handling procedures? This material has been handled for over a century, and it’s pretty well understood by now how to do it. I’ll be very interested to see the full information on what happened.

When we were working with N2O at Edwards there was a pretty complete handling protocol for N2O and we had to demonstrate our compliance for the pad testing safety review. The guys at Scaled are certainly professional — even if they weren’t working to the 127-1 they must have had a set of procedures that were reviewed for safety.

FAA may not have direct jurisdiction (it’s a fire and industrial safety matter if it’s at the plant) but it will probably demand the full report as supporting data to the SS2 license application.

[Friday morning update]

According to Space Today, the death toll is now three, all Scaled employees.

And the Bakersfield Californian has the names of those killed, though not the injured:

The victims were employees of Scaled Composites, the company that is working on the aircraft and helped build SpaceShipOne. Killed were Eric Blackwell, 38, of Randsburg, Charles May, 45, of Mojave and Todd Ivens, 33, of Tehachapi, according to the Kern County Coroner

This headline seems a little misleading. When I first saw it, I thought that it meant that the Air Force had given up on orbital refueling, but all it means is that the experiment was largely successful, and is over.