Explosion at remote Mojave spaceport site kills 3

William Atkins
Friday, 27 July 2007 19:26

Science - Space

A fatal explosion occurred on Thursday 7/26/2007 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California where a new rocket motor was being tested for space tourism spacecraft SpaceShipTwo, a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.           

The company Scaled Composites LLC, founded by American aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, was conducting the test. Two employees were killed at the time of the explosion and four others were transported to the hospital. One has since died.
 

The test involved the propellant system; specifically involving the testing of flow rates for nitrous oxide through fuel injectors, what is called a “cold fire test” where the propellant was under pressure but at room temperature. The remote test site is about 80 miles from Los Angeles, California.
 

SpaceShipTwo is designed to be a small suborbital spaceplane that will carry six passengers and two crewmembers about 62 to 65 miles above the Earth on a suborbital trip. It is expected to begin commercial service in 2009. The first SpaceShipTwo used for commercial flights is reported to be called Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise, a tribute to the ship of the same name in the series of television shows based on Star Trek®, created by Gene Roddenberry.

The program is being developed as a joint venture (The Spaceship Company) between Scaled Composites, headed by Burt Rutan, and The Virgin Group, headed by Richard Branson. A mockup of the spaceplane was introduced in September 2006 at the NextFest exposition in New York. However, the actual operatonal craft has been kept a highly regard secret.
 

In 2004, Rutan won the Ansari X-Prize for the two manned back-to-back sub-orbital space flights by a private company with SpaceShipOne. Rutan was not at the site when the explosion occurred.
 

The site is near Mojave, California, a small community of about 4,000 people in California’s southern Mojave Desert. The spaceport is certified by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Northrop Grumman Corporation owns a large stake in Scaled Composites LLC. According to the company’s website (http://www.scaled.com/): “Scaled Composites, LLC is an aerospace and specialty composites development company located in Mojave, California (about 80 miles north of Los Angeles). Founded in 1982 by Burt Rutan, Scaled has broad experience in air vehicle design, tooling, manufacturing, specialty composite structure design, analysis, fabrication and developmental flight test.”