page_title: SpaceShipTwo
section_title: October 2014 crash
hierarchical_section_title: SpaceShipTwo / Development / Test flights / October 2014 crash
caption_attribution_description: English: NTSB Go-Team inspects a tail section of the crashed VSS Enterprise, a SpaceShipTwo spaceplane. This image is a frame of the B-roll video recorded by NTSB and published on November 1, 2014. The image was cropped to the 16:9 ratio.
context_page_description: The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It is manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.
  SpaceShipTwo is carried to its launch altitude by a Scaled Composites White Knight Two, before being released to fly on into the upper atmosphere powered by its rocket engine. It then glides back to Earth and performs a conventional runway landing. The spaceship was officially unveiled to the public on 7 December 2009 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. On 29 April 2013, after nearly three years of unpowered testing, the first one constructed successfully performed its first powered test flight.
  Virgin Galactic plans to operate a fleet of five SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes in a private passenger-carrying service and has been taking bookings for some time, with a suborbital flight carrying an updated ticket price of US$250,000. The spaceplane could also be used to carry scientific payloads for NASA and other organizations.
  On 31 October 2014, during a test flight, the first SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise broke up in flight and crashed in the Mojave desert.
context_section_description: On 31 October 2014, SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise suffered an in-flight breakup during a powered flight test, resulting in a crash killing one pilot, Michael Alsbury, and injuring the other. It was coincidentally the first flight to use the new type of fuel, based on nylon plastic grains. The crash was caused by a premature deployment of the feathering mechanism, which is normally used to aid in a safe descent. SpaceShipTwo was still in powered ascent when the feathering mechanism deployed.  Disintegration was observed two seconds later.
  As of October 2014, SpaceShipTwo had conducted 54 test flights. The spacecraft had used its "feathered" wing configuration during ten of these test flights.
  The National Transportation Safety Board conducted an independent investigation into the accident.  In July 2015, the NTSB released a report which cited inadequate design safeguards, poor pilot training, lack of rigorous federal oversight and a potentially anxious co-pilot as important factors in the 2014 crash. While the co-pilot was faulted for prematurely deploying the ship's feathering mechanism, the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space
  Transportation, and the ship's designers were also faulted for not creating a fail-safe system that could have guarded against such premature deployment.
caption: NTSB Go-Team inspects a tail section of VSS Enterprise
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