Virgin was warned before about rocket engine safety: Expert
THE HAGUE: An expert at an international organization specializing in space safety said Sunday she had warned Virgin before over safety concerns after the death of three engineers in a rocket engine explosion in 2007.
“I warned them that the rocket motor was potentially dangerous,” said Carolynne Campbell, a rocket propulsion expert at the Netherlandsbased International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS).
“We were concerned about what was going on at Virgin Galactic and that what they were doing wasn’t up to speed,” she said.
Early theories about the causes of the crash have focused on the fuel being used in SpaceShipTwo, amid reports the company was repeatedly warned of concerns about its safety.
The National Transportation and Safety Board has opened an official probe into Friday’s Virgin Galactic spacecraft crash that left one pilot dead and another seriously injured, but said it could take up to a year.
The IAASS is a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering international cooperation and scientific advancement in the field of space systems safety, based in Noordwijk, which is also home to the European Space Agency’s technical research center.
Campbell said that in 2009 she sent copies of a scientific paper for the IAASS on the dangers of rocket propulsion “to various people at Virgin, but it was ignored.” She again warned Virgin Galactic in a subsequent telephone conversation, but her warnings still went unheeded, Campbell said.
Campbell said she would not like to speculate on the cause of the crash, “because I don’t have all the data.”
Friday’s accident was not the first tragedy to strike the Virgin Galactic program. In 2007, three people were killed after a rocket designed for use in SpaceShipTwo exploded at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
British tycoon Richard Branson of Virgin hit back at early theories surrounding what may have caused the accident. “To be honest, I find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they’re saying can be saying things before the NTSB makes their comments,” he said.
Authorities who Saturday carried out their first full day of investigation into a US spacecraft crash that killed one pilot and seriously injured another said probing the incident could take a year.
National Transportation Safety Board acting chairman Christopher Hart told reporters that debris from the SpaceShipTwo rocket crash was strewn over an area five miles (eight kilometers) long, indicating a likely in-flight breakup.
The on-site investigation work would last up to a week, he said, but the full probe piecing together the facts and analysis “will be probably 12 months or so.” British tycoon and Virgin chief Richard Branson meanwhile insisted earlier in the day that he was undeterred and that his dream of commercial space travel was still alive.
The doomed Virgin flight — the 35th by SpaceShipTwo, which is meant to carry tourists on short but expensive trips to space — marked the first time the spaceship had flown on a new kind of plastic-based rocket fuel mixture.
Hart earlier told reporters that investigators were entering unknown territory since it was “the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch that involved persons on board.” However, he noted that the test flight “was heavily documented in ways we don’t usually see with normal accidents.” That included six cameras on the vehicle and three on WhiteKnightTwo — the bigger aircraft that had carried the spaceship.