Blast kills three at Mojave Spaceport, California

Friday, July 27, 2007

Mojave Spaceport
Image: Californiacondor.

Three people were killed and another three seriously injured in a blast at Mojave Spaceport, located in California, United States. The blast occurred on Thursday at 2:34 p.m. PDT (UTC-7) while Scaled Composites was conducting cold flow test of a rocket engine.

According to Tony Diffenbaugh of the Kern County Fire Department, two of the victims died immediately in the blast, while the third succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.

"Our units arrived on the scene at a remote test site in the northeast portion of the airport. What they found was six victims of an apparent explosion with various traumatic and burn injuries," Diffenbaugh said.

Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, said a press conference: "We just don't know" why the explosion occurred, nitrous oxide usually is "not considered a hazardous material."

Scaled Composites is in a partnership with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic to build SpaceShipTwo, which hopes to become the first commercially available passenger spaceflight for space tourism.

The accident comes just days after Northrop Grumman announced it would increase its stake in Scaled Composites to 100%.

Sources

Dan Whitcomb. "Three killed in blast at rocket site in Calif." — Reuters, July 27, 2007
AFP. "Rocket explosion kills two in California" — SpaceWire, July 27, 2007
AP. "2 Killed, 4 Injured In Explosion At Mojave Airport" — KCBS-TV, July 27, 2007

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Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.