Sean Curran
11/3/14
Earth Science/ D Block Odd Mrs. McClellen
Rogers, James. "Experts: Virgin Galactic Crash Will Change the Face of Space Tourism." Fox News. FOX News Network, 3 Nov. 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.
The article I read was about how the recent crash of a Virgin Galactic ship will affect space tourism. The ship that crashed this week, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, was going on a test flight over the Mojave desert. The crash happened while the plane applied it re-entry system, and it ended up killing the co-pilot and seriously injuring the pilot. As it states in the article,” However, NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher Hart said that investigators are still a long way from finding the cause of the crash, adding that it could take months of investigation.” While the crash was tragic, it also caused a huge loss of profit for Virgin Group, the company that owned the ship. This is because the ship was selling seats to customers for $250,000 a seat, with 80 million dollars worth of seats already booked. The crash of SpaceShipTwo came just mere days after an unmanned rocket headed to the International Space Station exploded seconds after launch.
This crash has a very large impact on space tourism, a promising new industry that could soon take ordinary people, with a unordinary amount of cash, into space. The crash has a big impact on space tourism because it brings safety into perspective. While bringing ordinary citizens into space is a huge step for mankind, many consider the journey not safe enough, mostly because of this crash, to risk. Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Group, shoots down the idea the space travel will always be this risky, stating ,” In the early days of aviation, there were accidents, and then aviation became very safe.” This crash has been a dark moment for space tourism, and experts, such a Chris Carberry, executive director of Explore Mars, predict that the following months not be good for space tourism.
The writing of this article had both good and bad moments. There were several things I thought were good in this article. One strength was how the author was able to get quotes from experts on the topic with both promising and bleak outlooks for space tourism. Another strength was how the author was able to have paragraphs that were short and to the point, not long ones that kept rambling on and on. How ever, while the were many strengths in this article, there also were a few weaknesses. One weakness was how the author ended his article on a paragraph that sound like it should be in the middle of the article, not the concluding one. Another weakness in the article was how the article didn’t include several important facts about the ship, like how much it cost to make and how old it was, that left the reader constantly wondering throughout the article.
You were smart in choosing your article; it addresses the possibilities of accident that may occur in these space missions, raising awareness of the importance of safety (as you mentioned in your second paragraph). You used specific details from the articles as well (quotes, names of important people, and numbers) to help the reader better understand your review. I also thought you organized your third paragraph nicely. I think it's exciting to know that ordinary people have the opportunity to go to space (if they have enough money) and important to society since all of us eventually will be forced to evacuate planet Earth in about 13 billion years. I also did not know that it would take a long time to find the cause of the crash...I thought we had better technology than that today. It would have been awesome if you had elaborated on what could have been done by the author in the third paragraph, but overall it's a really solid review.
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