David Rosenthal: uncertainty

Transcript context

…It’s like the classic software engineering aphorism that the first 90%, all you have left then is the second 90%. Exactly, orr maybe in this case, the second 99%. We mentioned that SpaceShipOne was really a prototype vehicle. All of Burt’s designs, like the Voyager, all those other great planes, this is not ready for a Virgin America (let alone Virgin Galactic) safety measures or comfort here. Three years later, in 2007, we still don’t have SpaceShipTwo ready or really even close to ready. Very tragically in July of 2007, there was an accident at Scaled when they were testing some of the engine components. Three Scaled employees were killed in an explosion when they are testing these engine components which was terrible and unfortunately not the only tragedy that’ll happen in Virgin’s history here. Shortly after that is actually the very next month when Northrop acquires all of Scaled. I don’t know if that was part of what was behind the acquisition, but certainly it was a few years later after that that Burt retired. You’ve got some transition happening here where the major technology provider to the spaceship company is now part of Northrop. Importantly about that accident, that wasn’t something like they thought a design would work and it wouldn’t, or that it didn’t and it crashed or anything like that. This was literally hey, we’re doing an on the ground test with fuel that we perceive to be safe and it just wasn’t safe. That’s most observed by the fact that the folks who are watching were behind a chain link fence. It wasn’t even like we have to go to a facility because something could go wrong. Just people think anything could go wrong there.…

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