Honoring fallen test pilot
Alsbury will be remembered at Kennedy Space Center
A Scaled Composites test pilot killed nearly five years ago during a SpaceShipTwo test flight will be remembered on the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex, the first non-governmental flier so honored.
The Astronaut Memorial Foundation Board of Directors, which sponsors the memorial, changed its criteria last week to include private astronauts on the memorial and to add Mike Alsbury’s name to the monument.
Previously, only those who died in training or during government-sponsored spaceflight were included.
Alsbury, 39, was killed on Oct. 31, 2014 during a powered test flight of the SpaceShipTwo prototype in which the vehicle broke apart.
He was part of the Scaled Composites team developing the suborbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic, intended to one day provide flights for paying passengers and scientific experiments.
Alsbury’s legacy lives on locally in the Fulton & Alsbury Academy of Arts and Engineering in Lancaster. The Lancaster School District campus was jointly named for Alsbury and Air Force and NASA test pilot Fitzhugh “Fitz” Fulton, who died in 2015 at age 89.
“We think it is very fitting that Mike Alsbury’s name will be memorialized alongside those of the crews of Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia. He was a loving husband and father, a man of humility and integrity,” Principal Andrew Glatfelter said. “Serving at a school named for him is a great honor, and we are proud that with this decision from the AMF, visitors to the Kennedy Space Center will remember his legacy as a pioneer of commercial space flight.”
The private, not-forprofit Astronaut Memorial Foundation was formed following the Challenger accident in 1986 to recognize the sacrifices of the nation’s astronauts, while inspiring future generations through educational programs at the Center for Space Education, according to the website.
The names of 24 astronauts — Alsbury will make 25 — are remembered on the memorial itself, dedicated in 1991. Made of mirror-finished granite panels, the astronauts’ names are engraved through the granite, allowing light to project through and illuminating the names.
Among those remem
bered are the crews of both the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, the astronauts of Apollo 1 who died in a ground test of the capsule and astronauts lost during training aircraft accidents. In addition, the memorial includes X-15 rocket plane pilot Michael Adams. According to a Florida
Today story, the change in criteria for inclusion in the memorial for private spaceflight covers crew members and must be in a Federal Aviation Administration-licensed mission that is either exploratory or experimental.
This specifically excludes flights for spaceflight tourists, according to the article.