Cosmic girl mission fail?

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Something has gone wrong. This is the first orbital launch from Britain, and was so important. It isn't clear at this stage if the mission can be salvaged, or if there is any danger of a crash.

very upsetting

I saw this too. And thought who is paying for this. Seems like a waste of money.

Space tech is never a waste of money. Look at what happened to dinosaurs - they did not have the space tech to defend themselves. We would have, if we faced a similar threat. International cooperation and progress in space technology always makes the planet easier and easier to protect.

Space tech is never a waste of money. Look at what happened to dinosaurs - they did not have the space tech to defend themselves. We would have, if we faced a similar threat. International cooperation and progress in space technology always makes the planet easier and easier to protect.

WHAT???? Your post doesn't make sense at all. Dinosaurs couldn't defend themselves due to lack of space tech??

Erm, dinosaurs? Was it because their little arms couldn’t reach the launch button?

Well that’s a shame. I watched it take off on Sky

what do you find difficult to understand about that? They were defenceless - we are not. Without space technology, we would go the same way as they did, eventually

It's tenuous in the context of Cosmic Girl I admit. Possibly the link being drawn is that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid hitting Earth with enormous force. Scientists are working on the idea that IF it were to be a threat again (not tomorrow - they reckon it might happen once every 250 million years and the dinosaur one was about 60 million years ago) we would have the technology to send rockets into space to knock it off its collision course and send it merrily on its way without a catastrophic impact.

Yes its sad but the salvaging of this mission seems to be as much resting in its accurate communication about everything that went right, as with its physical anomaly assessment and repair and rebuild of the final boost to altitude equipment that went wrong.

it sounds like the Virgin company built the launcher tech and they (and their insurers!) must be heartbroken but it sounds like the Cornwall spaceport and the plane journey doing the actual launch release itself all went 100% to plan, proving the UK as an effective space base. For me as a taxpayer that is very reassuring!

Cornwall is a great site for the UK to roll out its first space port-it’s one of the most deprived UK counties and crying out for jobs and training in skilled jobs such as in space tech. A more successful launch in total would have attracted investment to the UK Spaceport, but hopefully this tech problem won’t deter that investment in our space capacity.

As Melissa Thorpe head of the UK Spaceport said, the logistical side of the launch from the Spaceport went completely to plan.

So this is not a problem long term so long as Virgin can rebuild and relaunch its launcher. As Virgin’s spokesman said, space tech is hard!

The BBC included the list of what the satellites to be put up at this launch were going to be used for - some really important things, so I really hope that this rebuild and relaunch happens soon- just a couple of examples:

‘The Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment (CIRCE) is a pair of satellites carrying "space weather" sensors. Space weather describes the interaction of energetic particles and magnetic fields emitted from the Sun with the Earth's upper atmosphere. These interactions affect the performance of other satellites and radio communications around the Earth.

IOD-3 Amber will listen for the radio transmissions from ships at sea. This is a pathfinder for an eventual constellation of satellites that would use this method to locate vessels not directly advertising their position. It's a way of detecting illegal fishers and smugglers.’

I can’t stop checking the BBC news live coverage of the launch every time I wake up tonight! www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-64215127

I hate the tacky blokey ‘cosmic Girl’ name though! 🤮
It’s only acceptable if there is already a whole Virgin fleet named after Jamiroquai songs..
Soace cowboy?
Emergency on planet earth?
Virtual insanity?
When you gonna learn?

^ Virgin should definitely do this.
I really like Jamiroquai and hope that JK is having fun with all this on social media

Yes they definitely should 😂

This is reminding me of Roman watching his doomed rocket launch on his phone in the loos in Succession.

Its not a tenuous link at all, there are thousands and thousands of Near Earth Objects monitored around the clock by space scientists through satellites and telescopes and the United Nations has a whole department dedicated to planetary defense, planning and testing and monitoring possible defensive operations.

Far from being a once in 250 million year event, meteorites capable of killing fall to the Earth every year. Areas of the globe have been destroyed by meteorites every century of history

We currently have the capacity to avert an extinction level event. We may possibly, with luck, detect and divert a meteor capable of wiping a country off the map. We do not have the capacity to detect, identify and divert a meteorite capable of destroying a city.

Space science may save the whole planet later on this century. Not in the near future, as a meteor large enough to endanger us as a species would be detected years in advance. And nothing that big is going to hit in the next decade. Luckily we are relatively sure of that, thanks to the money spent on space science.

But something large enough to destroy your country may only be a year away and something large enough to destroy your city may only be an hour away

We need a lot more investment and experimentation to be safe from these threats

@YewNearsEve totally agree

But something large enough to destroy your country may only be a year away and something large enough to destroy your city may only be an hour away

It isn't though

How do you know it isn't?

It might be, you don't know that, but any warning you do have would be curtesy of the international space programmes, as would any protection you have.

We would currently have something less than an hour or two warning of an event that could be big enough to destroy a city. We would not be able to take any action other than order an evacuation. We might have no warning at all, it might be a case of working out what happened after the event.

We need more satellites, more research and more progress in space technology, to protect from this.

Meteorites big enough to destroy cities fall every century. It is just pot luck whether they hit a city or not

Exactly, any warning or protection we do have is through space technology. And that is enough to protect against an extinction-level event, but we have no protection against a meteorite large enough to destroy, say Birmingham, and we may not even get an hour to evacuate. Hence the need for more research and development in space tech. Because this will happen. It does happen. It has not happened in an inhabited area in the modern age, but it will