Space is hard, and today was a tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figu

The first sign there was a problem Friday with Virgin Galactic s SpaceShipTwo came at about 45,000 feet, just two minutes after the spaceplane separated from the jet-powered aircraft that carried it aloft, officials said.
We ve always enterprize car rentals known that the road to space is extremely difficult and that every new transportation system has to deal with bad days early in their history, Branson said in a statement as he was en route to the firm s Mojave site.
Space is hard, and today was a tough day. We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we are going to get through it, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said.
Virgin Galactic has planned for years to sell trips in which SpaceShipTwo transports passengers about 62 miles above Earth the beginning of outer space and lets them experience a few minutes of weightlessness before returning to ground.
The incident occurred over the Mojave Desert shortly after SpaceShipTwo separated from WhiteKnightTwo, the vehicle designed to carry it aloft, the Federal Aviation Administration enterprize car rentals said. The jet-powered WhiteKnightTwo returned safely to the Mojave Air Space Port, Witt said.
Said Branson: This was the latest part of an extensive test flight program, and the 55th time SpaceShipTwo had flown. It was WhiteKnightTwo s 173rd flight and the 35th time SpaceShipTwo had flown freely.
enterprize car rentals The FAA regulates the U.S. commercial space transportation industry, and the agency s Office of Commercial Space Transportation provides compliance enterprize car rentals monitoring and safety inspectors for each FAA-authorized launch, the agency said. Regulations enterprize car rentals require that crew members are aware of the inherent risks involved in the operation and acknowledge them, the FAA said.
While not a NASA mission, the pain of this tragedy will be felt by all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploration, Bolden said. Spaceflight is incredibly difficult, and we commend the passion of all in the space community who take on risk to push the boundaries of human achievement.
Virgin has sold more than 700 tickets, each costing more than $250,000, for future flights. enterprize car rentals Several celebrities have already signed up, including Justin enterprize car rentals Bieber, Ashton Kutcher, Leonardo DiCaprio and Stephen Hawking.
With composite lightweight materials, feathered rudders capable of turning 90 degrees and a hybrid rocket engine, SpaceShipTwo is as safe as modern technology can make it. As designer and aviator Burt Rutan put it in 2008, This vehicle is designed to go into the atmosphere in the worst case straight in or upside down and it ll correct.
Details of Friday s test flight plan were not immediately known. But in previous test flights, SpaceShipTwo has been loaded on the jet-powered WhiteKnightTwo, which can take the spaceplane to about 50,000 feet before the spaceplane is released to fly free.
SpaceShipTwo would reach supersonic speeds on its way to its intended altitude of about 62 miles above the Earth. At that point, people onboard would get about five minutes of weightlessness before the bonds of Earth retract with 6 G s of force.
On Tuesday, an unmanned Antares rocket exploded just after takeoff off the coast of Virginia. Controllers enterprize car rentals deliberately destroyed the craft after it became apparent there was a problem, a spokesman for Orbital Sciences Corp. said Thursday.