The Rocky Road to Space

[major_clanger]

A thought voiced by many observers of the nascent space tourism industry is that its first real test will be how it deals with a fatal accident. That moment may have come.

Now, this seems to have involved technical staff rather than fare-paying members of the public, and it would be by no means the first space related industrial accident (see here and here) . But its impact on a relatively small operation such as Scaled Composites could still be severe, especially if any of the casualties are key personnel. One of the weaknesses of 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' outfits is that they are very vulnerable to the loss of staff - or, indeed, investor confidence. I will be interested to see Branson's reaction to this; expect a declaration of continued support and enthusiasm, followed by a quiet slip in the schedule for Virgin Galactic's first launch.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Scaled Composites ain't small any more -- as of last week, Northrop-Grumman expanded their shareholding from 40% to 100%, keeping Burt Rutan on as CEO for the time being.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

True (although thanks for the pointer, I hadn't seen that particular story). But even if they are in effect a specialist division of NorGrumm, I would still be concerned about concentrations of key expertise. I once worked with a specialist contractor team from a Very Big IT company which included one particular guru whose demise under a London bus would have given a lot of people really serious business continuity issues.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Typically an outfit like NG would have put in place some critical personal insurance. IIRC the largest life insurance deal in history was a record company covering the head of an acquisition the death of whom would have potentially rendered the entire deal valueless.

Even Rand Simberg, over on his Blog, has expressed some dismay that they didn't appear to have a PR plan in place to handle this, which they'd better have for Virgin.

Not a good day following the sabotage to the ISS and the drunk astronauts story.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely. I think SC only had about 40-60 employees. It's got to be a huge and upsetting shock, as well as a corporate setback -- it's bad enough in an outfit of around a thousand folks when just one person dies unexpectedly, but this looks to be 5-10% of the entire work force.

Nopefully Northrop-Grumman will have enough liability insurance to cover the damage, but yes, I think a schedule slip is likely. Even if they can recruit plug-in replacement bodies and close the book on the inevitable inquiry, nobody's going to get any real work done for a while.