Virgin Galactic Determined to Persevere and Succeed

Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides made clear today that the company remains committed to its goal of opening space for all both with suborbital flights of passengers and launches of small satellites.

The company, owned by Richard Branson, is still recovering from a fatal SpaceShipTwo spaceplane test flight accident on October 31, 2014 that killed one of the two pilots.  Co-pilot Michael Alsbury died. Pilot Peter Siebold survived.  The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has not completed its investigation, but determined that Alsbury prematurely moved a lever to initiate a “feathering system” designed to slow the spaceplane during its descent.  It should have been moved when the spaceplane was at Mach 1.4, but he moved it at Mach 1.02 during ascent.  Deployment of the feathering system was supposed to require a second lever to be moved by the pilot and that did not take place.  Why it deployed nonetheless is still under scrutiny.  The deployment of the feathering system at the wrong time apparently created aerodynamic forces that ripped the spaceplane apart.

Whitesides said that Virgin Galactic (VG) will “recover, we’ll learn the hard lessons from the accident, and return to flight.”  In fact, he said test flights will resume in 2015 and commercial flights will begin in 2016. 

VG was planning to build five SpaceShipTwo vehicles.  The one lost in the October accident was the only completed vehicle, but a second was already in manufacturing.  Today, Whitesides said structural fabrication is over 90 percent complete as well as two-thirds of the systems.  “Weight on wheels is now in sight,” he told the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech2015 conference in Kissimmee, FL, adding that the vehicle will accommodate any changes identified by the NTSB to enhance safety.

Society has become “risk intolerant,” Whitesides observed, which has both positive and negative consequences.  Injuries may be reduced by people wearing bike helmets, but taking “smart risks” is essential to progress.  He said he has spent a great deal of time since the accident explaining the nature of test flights to the public and press and concedes that VG could have done a better job of managing expectations.  There is no simple answer to when a vehicle is ready to fly, he stressed.

As for launching small satellites (smallsats), VG is developing LauncherOne, an air-launched vehicle.  Whitesides was optimistic about the market for such satellites, especially constellations of low Earth orbit (LEO) smallsats that will need continual replenishment.   The first flight test of LauncherOne is expected in 2016.

Branson “has redoubled his commitment” to VG, Whitesides asserted.  “A second spaceship is close at hand and we are hard at work on LauncherOne. We will persevere and ultimately succeed,” he vowed.

Correction:  An earlier version of this article identified Whitesides as President of VG.  He is currently its CEO.