On October 28, an Antares rocket on a resupply mission to the International Space Station exploded 15 seconds after launch in coastal Virginia. Three days later, SpaceShipTwo, the experimental spacecraft from Virgin Galactic, disintegrated 50,000 feet over the Mojave Desert. It was a terrible week for private space: One dead. One injured. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of technology, supplies, and experiments destroyed.
Not surprisingly, the incidents set off a round of furious hair tearing and teeth gnashing over the future of private space. Could the nascent industry survive such unmitigated disasters? The answer came less than two weeks later, when Orbital Sciences, which manages the Antares, and Virgin Galactic announced plans to move forward. Orbital had selected a new engine to replace the fl awed AJ26 on the…
