The venerable aviation tradition of blaming dead pilots for fatal crashes continues with the investigation of last October’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo disaster. The NTSB spreads plenty of opprobrium around, putting private manufacturers and federal agencies on the hook, but finally it’s the dead co-pilot’s hand on the lever that unlocked the craft’s radical wing “feathering” system that takes the heat. It remains to be seen whether having iconoclastic billionaires pushing humans into outer space will be any different from Cold War presidents. The hereditary monarchs who rule the United Arab Emirates, where stoning and flogging are legal punishments and criticism of the government is not allowed, seem likely to be congenial hosts someday for Richard Branson’s spaceport.
