SpaceShipTwoApolloOne

I was saddened to hear of the deaths of three Scaled Composites employees and the critical injuring of three others in an explosion during an engine test for the SpaceShipTwo program. The test apparently did not involve the ignition of the engine, but rather dealt with measuring the flow of liquid nitrous oxide through the engine. This procedure was performed numerous times for SpaceShipOne and had been done successfully for the SpaceShipTwo program before yesterday's tragedy. Burt Rutan was quoted as saying "We were doing a test that we believed was completely safe. ... We don't know why it exploded."

All of this seems eerily reminiscent of Apollo 1 fire that killed Gus Grissom, Rodger Chaffee and Ed White in 1967. NASA and its contractors thought that the test was safe because they had done it many times over the years without incident. It sounds like the Challenger disaster where concerns about the O-rings were swept aside because they'd had problems before, but it never amounted to much. It sounds like the Columbia disaster where the dangers of foam strikes on the heat shield were discounted because they'd had lots of foam strikes before that never caused a problem. I realize that hindsight is 20/20, but pure oxygen environments promote rapid combustion, damaged O-rings can permit the leakage of high temperature gases, foam traveling over 500 miles-per-hour can destroy carbon-carbon composite structures and nitrous oxide, an oxidizer, can also be used as a monopropellant rocket fuel in the presence of high heat and a catalyst. The question for the accident investigators in the most recent case is what conditions created yesterday's explosion.

I don't dare equate anything that Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites do with NASA, but in this instance the parallels have me more than a little bit concerned. Mr. Rutan strikes me as an honorable, driven, and talented individual who will do whatever it takes to make sure that this incident will never be repeated; who will learn the safety lessons and make sure they are followed throughout his business; who will take care of the employees and families of those involved; and who will never forget that this happened on his watch. I have faith in Mr. Rutan and his people. I wish them all the best. Ad astra!

NASA, meanwhile, seems to be earning one of the meaner explanations for its acronym: "Need Another Seven Astronauts". Recently they've had a railroad derailment of a shipment of solid rocket motor segments, had an astronaut arrested for assault and attempted kidnapping, discovered an instance of sabotage on the part of a contractor employee and, incredibly, had reports of astronauts being permitted to fly drunk. NASA used to be something special. Now it is just another government bureaucracy.

Long term, my money is still with Burt Rutan, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack and those other pioneers like them.