California To Deal With Mojave Accident

The Federal Aviation Administration will allow California authorities to investigate the rocket engine explosion that killed three last month at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The FAA considers the tragedy an "industrial accident," not an accident related to flight, and so will leave the matter to the state.

How the accident will affect the first passenger flight of Virgin Galactic is unclear. That flight was not scheduled until late 2009 even before the accident. A rough parallel may be drawn with the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in January, 1967. That led to a major overhaul of the Apollo Command Module, but less than two years later, Christmas, 1968, three Apollo astronauts were orbiting the Moon.

Apollo, of course, had a deadline to meet. Virgin Galactic and the builder of its ships, Scaled Composites, are fighting no such deadline. Still, they can't simply tease potential customers; they need to fly at some reasonable point in time. We will see in the next weeks and months whether the explosion is a serious setback to the space tourism industry.