October 31, 2014 – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) would like to express its deepest sympathy to the people of Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites and all in the Mojave aerospace community involved in today’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) flight. We know the people involved and a loss for any of us is a terrible loss for all of us. Advancing space transportation and flight testing is a difficult and often challenging journey. SNC has reached out and has offered its assistance to Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites and the Mojave Spaceport during this difficult time.
Although we would prefer that the focus remains on the human side of this tragedy, due to the continued significant number of media inquiries we have received, we would like to provide a brief simple clarification. SNC was, in the past, a subcontractor to Scaled Composites, the prime contractor of this program for Virgin Galactic. We were previously involved with the three powered flight tests of SS2. However, SNC’s technical and program involvement ended in May of 2014 concurrent with Virgin Galactic’s decision to use its own internally developed technology for the rocket motor. SNC had no involvement in the engineering, manufacture or qualification testing of the motor used on this flight or in the integration of this motor to SS2.
As a result, SNC does not have any direct knowledge of what occurred beyond what has been reported publicly and asks that the utmost respect be provided to all involved in this difficult situation and that all future inquiries be directed at the appropriate time to Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.