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Explosion at Scaled Composites


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I was in a meeting at BAE Systems probably about 1.5 miles away from the explosion. At first we thought it was a sonic boom. Pretty big one but sometimes guys push it up early going through the hi-speed corridor so we thought nothing of it.

We broke for a break and that's when we heard that there was an explosion out at the boneyard. There was an explosion out there a couple of months ago on a weekend and foul play was suspected. Not sure what ever came of that one but we thought along the same lines this time around.

We're all a pretty tight community out here at the airport so within minutes we received phone calls telling us about the fatalities. A shame but all of us know this is all part of the deal when it comes to airplanes and test. Still a tough deal all the way around....

As a company, I feel bad for those guys at Scaled because you know what's coming next, FAA scrutiny and every piece of dirty laundry over there will be exposed to the masses. The reality is that all parts of the industry, regardless of how much due diligence they put into safety, do have things fall through the cracks. I just hope that those guys don't get put through the ringer any harder than they have to.

God bless to the families of these folks. Started out as just another day at work for all of them. A real shame....

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Do we know for sure if it was a Scaled facility or one used by their rocket motor subcontractor? Granted there are probably injuries among the Scaled crew, considering how tight nit everyone is at that place and with the rocket contractors. They are like a big family over there. The other bit is this takes place a few days after it was announced that Northrop Grumman had bought out Rutan's 60% share of Scaled (they already owned 40%) to now own 100% of Scaled Composites. Regardless of what might be found in the accident investigation, this could result in a management shakeup as well if it was something that happened inside Scaled and not with one of the contractors.

One thing is for sure, the timing of the whole thing sucks.

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