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