Sad news today as an explosion in the Mojave desert has claimed two lives and injured four others at the site of Richard Branson’s SpaceShipOne project.
Engineers there were testing a spaceship motor when a flow of nitrous oxide was ignited, causing a large explosion.
Scaled Composites, LLC, is the company that Branson has contracted with to head up the SpaceShipOne project. The six people involved in the explosion were all Scaled employees.
Project leader Burt Rutan was very upset by the accident. “We were doing a test we believe was safe. We don’t know why it exploded. We just don’t know,” he said.
Explosion halts work on Branson space ship [TimesOnline]