Space setback.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Virgin Galactic crash - Brief article

One pilot was killed and another was injured during an October 31 test flight of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. This was the 55th test flight for the private space tourism craft and the 35th for WhiteKnightTwo, the jet that carries the rocket plane aloft. SpaceShipTwo was declared "lost" in the Mojave desert; WhiteKnightTwo returned safely.

The incident, which occurred days after the explosion of an unmanned An tares rocket built for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by the private space company Orbital Sciences, reignited a discussion about the fate of the commercial space industry.

The day after the crash, Richard Branson told reporters his company would "not push on blindly" and "we owe it to our test pilots to figure out what went wrong. If we...