In the past days we have seen the pictures of the two major accidents to have struck the private space sector. On October 29 2014 the Orbital Sciences Äntares launch vehicle carrying the Cygnus spacecraft “Deke Slayton” on a commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station was lost four seconds after launch.
Two days later, on November 1st, the Virgin Galactic “Spaceship 2, crashed in California. One pilot, Michael Alsbury was killed, another, Peter Siebold was seriously injured.
Both incidents, whilst tragic, serve to remind us of the dangers inherent in the development of the new age of spacecraft and launch vehicles.
With the phase out of the space shuttle, spaceflight in the United States is entering a new age. Companies such as Space X, Sierra Nevada and Orbital Sciences are now competing to provide access to Low Earth Orbit whilst NASA is looking beyond Low Earth Orbit, working to develop the Orion spacecraft and the Heavy Lift Vehicle for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.
With this new age of space development comes a return to the past. Just as we; in the 1950’s and 1960’s underwent a period of development and test for our first tentative entry into space; so now, as the new space age dawns, we are undergoing a period of development and test for the new generation of cost effective spaceflight . Whilst we aim and test for success, and while we have stringent launch procedures to guard against catastrophic failure; the price of development and test is sometimes high, and tragically sometimes that failure results in loss of life.
Out of adversity comes success. In the early days of spaceflight 1 out of 5 launches failed. Wallops Island, the launch site for Äntares, witnessed many such failures. These failures and the subsequent examinations and investigations lead to the Delta and Atlas rockets, backbone of today’s US expendable launch vehicle fleet. In one month, a Delta 4 Heavy will launch the Orion Spacecraft on Exploration Flight Test One.
The ultimate success of the Apollo Moon landings came about due to the redesign of the Apollo spacecraft after the Apollo 1 fire. Through the post accident investigation, we realised that fundamentals which we had taken for granted throughout Mercury and Gemini in relation to the environmental systems of the spacecraft were floored. Less than two years after the loss of Grissom, White and Chaffee we flew to the moon in the new re-designed spacecraft. It is widely accepted that we would never have made Kennedy’s deadline for the moon landing had it not been for Apollo 1 and the changes it brought about.
In the1940’s in the very skies where Spaceship Two was being tested, Test Pilots sought to fly higher farther and faster in test aircraft at the cutting edge of aeronautical engineering. Names like Yeager, Crossfield and Armstrong are written in aviation immortality yet many others were written in the dusty sands of Mojave, paying the ultimate price as they sought to push the boundaries of “:the envelope” pursuing the sound barrier at the edge of space in the X series of rocket powered aircraft.
30 years later Concorde was flying commercial air passengers between London and New York and the Space Shuttle was in Atmospheric test.
Whilst the events of the past days are confronting; the long term success of these commercial ventures will have their origins in the recommendations from the ongoing investigations into both accidents, the adherence of both companies to those recommendations and a spirit within the companies to fly again.
Reports suggesting that civilian spaceflight may be delayed by several years in the wake of loss of Spaceship 2 may well prove accurate. Any redesign takes time; time for detailed examination and evaluation of the accident cause, time for careful redesign of components and time for retest and evaluation of test results. The age of civilian spaceflight will ultimately benefit from the lessons learned from the accident investigations now underway. Any accident, while costly in terms of human life, loss of hardware or loss of infrastructure can and does have the very real and beneficial effect of reducing complacency both at an engineering or managerial level, emphasising an attention to detail in manufacture and heightening safety standards within the launch team and the organisation as a whole.
It is to be hoped the companies concerned will grow in maturity from these accidents; emerging from these setbacks with a far stronger quality control program. One focussed on more stringent assembly procedures, pre-launch testing and flight safety thereby leading to vehicles of greater reliability as we enter the age of commercial spaceflight.