This week is quickly becoming a tough one for the aerospace industry, as just a day after NASA reported
tampering on an ISS bound computer, an
explosion at the Mojave Air and Space Port has claimed two lives and seriously injured four others. The blast reportedly occurred during a "test of a new rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo -- a spaceship being built for
Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space tourism company." According to a spokeswoman for the spaceport, the blast was "on a remote pad" at an airport home to
Scaled Composite (which is the builder of the first private manned rocket to reach space), but the firm's founder
Burt Rutan wasn't in attendance when the "cold fire test" went awry.