WASHINGTON, November 1 (RIA Novosti) — The crash of the Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipTwo in Califonia will be a setback to the company, retired space policy director at George Washington University John Logsdon told RIA Novosti on Friday.
"It's certainly setback, because Virgin Galactic was the most out in front and highest profile company in the industry and said it was beginning to offer commercial flights," Logsdon said.
Logsdon added that it is going to be harder for the company to determine new safety standards. He also stated it would take some time as well as a number of test flights to demonstrate an acceptable level of safety for people to not to be afraid to get on board.
On Friday, the spaceship's manufacturer Virgin Galactic announced that SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight in the US Mojave Dessert because of a serious anomaly.
Two crew members were on board the space flight vehicle that separated from the WhiteKnightTwo that carried it, one of whom died and another taken to a nearby hospital, a spokesman Ray Pruitt from the Kern County Sheriff's Department confirmed with RIA Novosti.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement that it is investigating the crash.
Space policy analyst Logsdon says that Virgin Galactic may also need to rethink the technology that was put into the space vehicle.
"The immediate challenge is finding out what caused this because the new fuel they were using was tested multiple times on the ground" Logsdon said.
"So, it had to be something more than just the new fuel that resulted in the accident, and I think there's going to be a lot of rethinking of the technology," he explained.
The SpaceShipTwo crash is the second space vehicle accident that happened this week in the United States.
On Tuesday, NASA's Antares spacecraft that was carrying cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) crashed six seconds after it launched from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Since the crash, an accident investigation team was set up in the United States to determine the exact cause of the incident, according to NASA.
