Nuts & Volts

Some pre-flight preparations at dawn.
Glenn Reynolds’ book — An Army of Davids.
Workers prepare the spaceship for its historic
flight. The large rocket motor will produce
17,000 lb thrust.
would be gigantic.”
Of course, there are not only
financial, but safety risks involved in
developing commercial space flight.
Branson said around the time of the
New Mexico spaceport’s debut that
Virgin Airlines is “used to transporting
millions of people ... transporting
them safely. And we want to keep that
impeccable record. We know what our
priorities are.”
But there were many deaths
associated with aviation during its
barnstorming days (they didn’t call
those early pilots “death-defying” for
nothing). And sooner or later, there
will be a Challenger or Apollo 1-like
disaster during these early days of
manned commercial spaceflight.
Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial.com
who calls himself “a recovering aerospace
engineer” believes that such a
setback wouldn’t be permanent to
this fledgling industry. “If it’s clearly
negligence on the part of the service
provider, it will certainly be devastating
for them, but not for the industry
as a whole,” he says, “Any more than
an airplane crash killed the aviation
industry in the early days in the ‘20s
and ‘30s when, in fact, many died in
airplanes.”
But risk always encourages
pioneers and adventurers. The
barnstormers of the 1920s paved the
way to flying becoming an everyday
experience for millions of people. In a
few decades, we may very well look
back with similar memories of the
men behind Virgin Galactic, and their
colorful efforts towards helping to
leave the cradle behind for good. NV
Photos courtesy of Scaled Composites,
LLC, unless noted otherwise.
70 March 2006