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Commercial Space Flight Explodes


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#1 Bowsette

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 12:20 PM

The world’s first spaceship designed for tourists exploded in midair and crashed to the floor of the Mojave Desert on Friday, killing one test pilot, severely injuring another, and leaving the young industry of commercial space rattled and heart­broken.

 

This has been a terrible week for commercial space in general: An Antares rocket, topped by a Cygnus capsule loaded with supplies for the International Space Station, exploded Tuesday night seconds after liftoff from a launchpad at Wallops Island, Va. Investigators from NASA and Orbital Sciences Corp., the Dulles, Va., company that owned the rocket and had a contract for multiple cargo missions to the space station, continue to look into the incident.

 

http://www.washingto...0549_story.html

 

And they were ready to take money from people for this. Yikes.


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#2 Calvary

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 12:59 PM

I heard about this. The fact that there were people in there is kind of chilling...obviously it's still not ready yet, I hope the families of those involved are taken care off.


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#3 The Robstar

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Posted 02 November 2014 - 12:48 AM

50 years of space flight ingenuity and they still can't get it right. 

 

It's the challenger disaster all over again.

 

I feel sad for the people who spent several thousands of dollars only to be shuttled to their death. I SMELL A LAWSUIT....... Unless they signed a waver saying that in the case of their demise.......


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#4 Krankykoala

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Posted 02 November 2014 - 01:14 PM

50 years of space flight ingenuity and they still can't get it right. 

 

It's the challenger disaster all over again.

 

I feel sad for the people who spent several thousands of dollars only to be shuttled to their death. I SMELL A LAWSUIT....... Unless they signed a waver saying that in the case of their demise.......

The craft was being tested. No passengers were on board, as I understand only a small crew were on board and only one of them died.

And launching rockets into space is no simple task, the slightest miscalculation or damage to a line, failed seal etc and the whole thing will end in a ball of flame.


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#5 The Robstar

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Posted 04 November 2014 - 06:33 PM

Launching rockets into space is no simple task, the slightest miscalculation or damage to a line, failed seal etc and the whole thing will end in a ball of flame.

How many times must one fail before they learn?

 

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#6 Bowsette

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Posted 04 November 2014 - 06:52 PM

The craft was being tested. No passengers were on board, as I understand only a small crew were on board and only one of them died.

And launching rockets into space is no simple task, the slightest miscalculation or damage to a line, failed seal etc and the whole thing will end in a ball of flame.

It's no simple task, true. But we managed it over 40 years ago. We managed it a couple of years ago. We managed it how many times between?

 

It's just disappointing to see it fail now, when a tried and tested method could've been used instead. Or unmanned, that could've worked. But no.


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#7 Affray

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Posted 04 November 2014 - 09:03 PM

If only they had more than like five percent of the country's funding resources so that they could perform better tests and find better ways to do what they are trying to do.

 

I read a little tidbit of info the other day that stated if the US cut their military budget by seventy percent of what they are operating at currently, they would still have the highest funded military in the world by a long shot. Maybe some things should be re-evaluated and some money should be put in places that could actually be useful for the future instead of being put toward that whole military industrial complex thing.


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#8 SpleenBeGone

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Posted 05 November 2014 - 10:09 AM

It's no simple task, true. But we managed it over 40 years ago. We managed it a couple of years ago. We managed it how many times between?

 

It's just disappointing to see it fail now, when a tried and tested method could've been used instead. Or unmanned, that could've worked. But no.

A big difference is the type of craft. It's substantially less hard to shoot a bit rocket into space than to get something into LEO and back under it's own power, which is that they're trying for, from my understanding.

 

Also, have they released the official cause yet? 

 

 

If only they had more than like five percent of the country's funding resources so that they could perform better tests and find better ways to do what they are trying to do.

 

I read a little tidbit of info the other day that stated if the US cut their military budget by seventy percent of what they are operating at currently, they would still have the highest funded military in the world by a long shot. Maybe some things should be re-evaluated and some money should be put in places that could actually be useful for the future instead of being put toward that whole military industrial complex thing.

I think we spend more than the next 10+ countries combined. Part of it does go to R&D stuff like NASA and the army engineers, but yeah, a whole lot of it could be put to better causes. 


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#9 Calvary

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Posted 05 November 2014 - 01:16 PM

The US government had nothing to do with this, Virgin is a private British conglomerate.

 

Also I really fucking hope this pushes the company to try again harder next time. If they give up because of this then the pilot will have died for nothing. I know if it were me who went up in a ball of flames I'd want them to go back to the drawing board rather than drop it because of a few wet nosed luddites.


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#10 The Robstar

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Posted 05 November 2014 - 03:06 PM

If only they had more than like five percent of the country's funding resources so that they could perform better tests and find better ways to do what they are trying to do.

 

I read a little tidbit of info the other day that stated if the US cut their military budget by seventy percent of what they are operating at currently, they would still have the highest funded military in the world by a long shot. Maybe some things should be re-evaluated and some money should be put in places that could actually be useful for the future instead of being put toward that whole military industrial complex thing.

You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer$30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?

 

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I'm fairly certain that the military watched Iron-Man and wanted to build a suit and a Jericho. lol


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#11 Krankykoala

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Posted 05 November 2014 - 03:32 PM

If only they had more than like five percent of the country's funding resources so that they could perform better tests and find better ways to do what they are trying to do.

Eh, Nasa has never had 5% of the country's funding. Only time it was even close were during the space race way back in the 60's. 

Fairly sure it has been at less than 1% since the early or mid 70's.

 

Military on the other hand gets like 20% or so(might be a little higher or lower, but fairly sure it is around there somewhere. I don't feel like looking it up) We spend way too much on military. 


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#12 Affray

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Posted 05 November 2014 - 07:42 PM

The US government had nothing to do with this, Virgin is a private British conglomerate.

Indeed.

But the US, regardless of it's military pressure at all times, also tends to be a major forerunner in the space technology field.

So if they funded their space programs more fully, the tech that came from those programs would trickle down to all the other programs world wide.

Which would make things like this a lot less likely, and push us further in to the future of space travel than we already are.

 

 

Eh, Nasa has never had 5% of the country's funding. Only time it was even close were during the space race way back in the 60's. 

Fairly sure it has been at less than 1% since the early or mid 70's.

 

Military on the other hand gets like 20% or so(might be a little higher or lower, but fairly sure it is around there somewhere. I don't feel like looking it up) We spend way too much on military. 

Yeah, the amount of money spent on military everything is astronomical.


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#13 SpleenBeGone

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Posted 06 November 2014 - 07:36 AM

Quick google gives me this on budgets. 

 

NASA's FY 2011 budget of $18.4 billion represented about 0.5% of the $3.4 trillion United States federal budget during that year, or about 35% of total spending on academic scientific research in the United States.

 

The U.S. military budget is $756.4 billion for FY 2015.


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