Sending humans into space is hugely difficult, insanely expensive and extremely dangerous.

The idea that space flight could be made as simple, risk-free and affordable as a high-end Antarctic cruise was always a fantasy. So the tragic loss of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft over the Mojave Desert may be the death knell for Richard Branson's dream of sending hundreds of wealthy but not necessarily super-rich people on short, sub-orbital hops into space for $US250,000 ($300,000) a seat.

Branson's biographer, Tom Bower, has since stated that the project was doomed, and claimed that an engineer had walked off just a few weeks ago, citing safety concerns over the engine technology. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

The project was founded at the turn of the century with the goal of opening up space to the paying public. Branson's company went into partnership with a brilliant American engineering firm called Scaled Composites, which won the $US10 million Ansari X-Prize in 2004 after it launched the first private ship SpaceShipOne (SS1) to the edge of space carrying a human passenger.

Advertisement

SpaceShipTwo (SS2), the spaceplane that crashed near the Mojave spaceport killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other, is an eight-seat version of SS1. Like the prototype, it is carried to 50,000 feet by a jet aircraft (called White Knight) and then detaches, firing its solid-fuel rocket to send it up to 100 kilometres (the arbitrarily defined limit of "space"). It then coasts for a few minutes in gentle free fall (allowing passengers to experience weightlessness) before gliding back to Earth.

Since the partnership was announced in 2004, Branson has insisted that the first commercial space flight will take place in about three years' time. But Virgin Galactic has been plagued by delays, technical problems and catastrophic loss of life. It is hard to see Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Justin Bieber or Tom Hanks all of whom have paid deposits taking to the air any time soon.

When I visited the Virgin Galactic headquarters a year ago, I was hugely impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm of the pilots and engineers. One or two sceptics had told me that Virgin Galactic was no more than a branding exercise for Branson's airline. This is not the case. I have no doubt that he was sincere in his belief that he can break the monopoly of NASA and the other state-funded agencies. And I have no doubt that Branson is sincere when he states that Virgin Galactic will persevere after this terrible setback.

But the truth is that the odds are against him. NASA has spent $US500 billion since its inception trying to make space flight safe and affordable. It has not succeeded. The statistics are skewed by the two shuttle disasters (which killed 14 people; 3 per cent of everyone who has been into space) but the reality is that your chances of dying on any trip into space are about one in 100: the same odds as dying while climbing Everest.

The odds of dying in a plane crash are in the low millions. The Virgin team said SS2 was "somewhere in between".

Originally posted here:

Everyday space flight a dream too far for Virgin Galactic