Private Space Flight Will be O.K.
Two private spacecraft were annihilated in fiery explosions last week. Catastrophic news for space tourism and private space contractors? Not particularly. Each situation exemplifies growing pains that this very young industry has to face.
The first failure ended in a massive picturesque fireball caught on camera. Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket mission was carrying a quantum entanglement photon experiment and dozens of tiny miniature satellites, as well as supplying 1400 pounds of food bound for the International Space Station. This was the fourth similar NASA contracted mission ferrying ISS supplies and science projects.
Mission crew on the ground hit the self-destruct button as the craft began to immolate seconds off the launch pad. The source of the problem was a failure originating at the rocket's engines. As yet, it's not clear exactly what happened.
The lesson here? Basing designs on retrofitting ancient parts with modern upgrades is not good business. Further, both the original rockets, designed by Russian firm Kuznetsov circa 1970 and the American upgrades have had spotty reliability. As the industry expands and companies tool up to design and build modern engines from scratch, the practice of buying up and retrofitting old parts to save money is going to drop. This will push that transition along at a greater pace.
Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, openly criticized Orbital Sciences for using the outdated equipment. His company designs, builds and tests everything from scratch. SpaceX experienced some early failures but has enjoyed a very good record since. Reliability and safety are achieved by designers and builders testing and refining their work.
Virgin Galactic's Spaceship 2 crash was an entirely different scenario with a similar lesson.
Somebody has to be the first person to fly every type of craft designed to leave the earth's surface. Test pilots make careers out of this incredibly dangerous mission. (Decades ago, it was an insanely dangerous mission: test pilots died twice a week at times.) Both victims of this accident were test pilots.
It's a dramatic headline, but cutting-edge spaceships have been killing test pilots for as long as they've been flying. It's a high price paid, but investigation will reveal the precise causes of the accident and improve safety that much more. This is the same type of refinement process as the evolving rocket engine designs. These test flights make sure things work before the normal crews, cargoes and passengers ever risk climbing on.
We've become so proficient at operating airliners and space flights that we've forgotten that painful early mishaps plagued those industries too.
Some reports quote experts saying that the entire nascent private space tourism industry may be in jeopardy. Sure, a few people may be scared off by these teething issues. Private spaceflight in 2014 is still difficult and risky. But any field with such high rewards for such challenging work will continue to evolve and refine itself. In a few decades, buying a ticket to space may not be any scarier than a ticket across the country.
(AP photo)
