Reports sketchy about the death at this stage. If so though, our Spaceship Roulette competition has claimed its first victim...http://www.abc.net.a...-flight/5859442
Dunno if I posted it somewhere else - like the astronauts thread - but... I read an article a while back suggesting the "spaceship roulette" problem was real. Basically pointing out that Virgin's ambitions were combining cutting edge computers and aeronautics with rocket science that wasn't keeping up. The problem being that the size of rockets in the machinery was pushing their performance to the limit. Can't Google and find it at the moment, but I'm fairly sure it was in The Guardian. As with the rocket planes 50 years ago, it might be the test pilots rather than any passengers that pay the price in development.