The latest commercial spaceflight news shows that it is still not safe for this to be a reality, after recent accidents in the first attempts.
Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company, has just recently suffered an accident that had one of its rocket planes, called SpaceShipTwo, crashing down in the Mojave Desert.
This commercial spaceflight news comes at a time when tourism in outer space is barely in its beginning stages, which could potentially mean a major throwback in the newly founded industry.
The latest commercial spaceflight news comes after SpaceShipTwo crashed late last week (last Friday) in the Mojave Desert. The rocket had been designed and built by Scaled Composites and sold to Virgin Galactic, a company created by entrepreneur Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group.
According to The New York Times, the Virgin Galactic accident happened as the space rocket was giving a try to a plastic-based new type of fuel. However, things didn't go well; not only did the rocket crash, but one of the two pilots also died at the scene.
The other pilot returned to safety after activating his parachute, suffering some grave injuries, according to the latest commercial spaceflight news.
Unfortunately, this isn't the only bad news surrounding the latest attempts at space tourism. According to Space.com, another rocket, an Orbital Sciences Corporation-designed ship named Antares, exploded only seconds after blasting off last Tuesday (on October 28), in an unmanned mission that was meant to go to the International Space Station, leaving cargo for NASA.
Orbital Sciences Corporation, like Scaled Composites, is also an American company that specializes in the design and manufacture of spaceships, both for space tourism as well as military and government customers.
A report in the United Kingdom paper The Telegraph explains that this commercial spaceflight news is yet another setback that leads the Jetsons-like dream of space tourism further away. According to their article, the Virgin Group space section (the previously named Virgin Galactic) has been making promises regarding space tourism since 2004, but accidents of different sorts have prevented the company to do well by its word.
