Virgin 'Ignored' Space Safety Warnings

Photo Credit: AFP / Josh EdelsonVirgin Galactic “ignored” repeated warnings in the years leading up to the deadly crash of its spacecraft in California, a rocket science safety expert said Sunday, as investigators hunted for clues to the accident.

Carolynne Campbell, a rocket propulsion expert with the Netherlands-based International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, said she could not speculate on the cause of Friday’s crash without “all the data.”

However, she said multiple warnings about the spacecraft’s motor and the fuel used to power it had been issued to Virgin since 2007, when three engineers died testing a rocket on the ground.

“Based on the work we’ve done, including me writing a paper on the handling of nitrous oxide, we were concerned about what was going on at Virgin Galactic,” she told AFP.

“I sent copies of the paper to various people at Virgin Galactic in 2009, and they were ignored.”