"Hard day" poses question for US in space

It could not have been more of a contrast to the cheery optimism with which Sir Richard Branson has sought to sell $250,000 tickets for a five-minute ride in space. At a press conference on Friday barely 20 miles from where the co-pilot of his company's SpaceShipTwo spacecraft had died, the chief executive of Virgin Galactic, looking shaken, gave an understated summary of the challenges his company faces.

"Space is hard," George Whitesides said. "Today was a tough day."

Yet a week that witnessed both the first fatal crash of a privately operated space craft and the spectacular failure of another privately operated, unmanned rocket, has raised questions that are likely to be asked for far longer than a single day.

Dick "Rocket" David, chief executive of NewSpace Global, an information service on emerging space companies, portrays such crashes as stepping stones on the way to progress towards routine space flight.

In the crash on Tuesday, an unmanned rocket operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation heading to the International Space Station exploded shortly after launch from Virginia.

"Incidents such as both of these are indeed lamentable," Mr David said. "But they are absolutely unavoidable as part of the necessary test process to reach the goal of safe, reliable, potentially affordable reusable launch vehicles and access to space."

Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Virginia-based Lexington Institute, suggested that the wreckage in the Mojave Desert might represent the demise not only of an individual aircraft and man but of the wider project of small, entrepreneurial space companies.

The craft's pilot, who parachuted out, was being treated in hospital for serious injuries on Friday night.

"What we're learning is that consistent success in launching space vehicles requires a much bigger investment of time and money than most entrepreneurs probably are willing to make," said Mr Thompson, who consults for Boeing, Lockheed Martin and some other established operators.

Apart from their timing, however, the week's two crashes may have little in common. Investigations in the Orbital Sciences crash are likely to focus on the rocket's engines. The Antares rocket - like many other start-up operators - not only uses old Soviet designs but actual rocket motors built in the 1960s for the Soviet Union's abandoned moon landing programme.

Investigations in the Virgin Galactic crash, meanwhile, are likely to focus on the technology's novelty. The flight was the spacecraft's first using a new, plastics-based fuel intended to give SpaceShipTwo extra lift for its brief excursion into suborbital space.

Mr David compared the process of trial-and-error under way to the early days of powered human flight, when the entrepreneurial Wright Brothers devised a successful technology that eluded larger companies.

"The most exciting things happening with respect to the commercialisation of space are within the start-up world," he said. "Through competition and innovation and adaptation, these start-ups will probably do as the Wright Brothers did roughly 100 years ago. That's to change the way that human beings access the heavens."

Mr Thompson pointed out that the most reliable current launch provider is United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The joint venture has lost none of the 85 satellites it has launched for the US government since being founded in 2005.

That reflects, Mr Thompson argued, the company's having brought to bear a level of investment that smaller enterprises are unlikely to be able to match. SpaceX, Elon Musk's space start-up, has claimed each ULA launch costs as much as $400m, something ULA denied.

"It has spent tens of billions of dollars on establishing that launch record," Mr Thompson said.

The answers to the debate are likely to await the detailed crash investigations that are already under way.

Yet there is little doubt that those findings are likely to change the number, size and ambitions of private space operators, rather than to stamp them out altogether. The new operators are swiftly learning to collaborate with older, longer-established companies.

One of the most eye-catching recent developments has been the agreement between ULA and Blue Origin - a start-up funded by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder - to develop a US-built replacement for the Russian-made RD180 motors that currently lift some of the US's most sensitive military satellites into space.

Mr Whitesides reflected the attitude of many in the space industry to such tragedies when he vowed that his company would recover from Friday's crash.

"We're going to get through it," he said. "The future rests in many ways on hard days like this."

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