Virgin Galactic CEO: ‘Space Is Hard’

In what can only be described as the understatement of the week, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides told reporters Friday following the fatal crash of one of the company’s commercial spaceships, “Space is hard, and today was a tough day.”

“The future rests in many ways on hard, hard days like this,” Whitesides added later in his short statement, “but we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who have been working so hard on them to understand this and to move forward, which is what we’ll do.”

According to Whitesides, Virgin head Richard Branson was on his way to the scene of the crash in the Mojave desert at the time of the press conference. Thus far, he has only tweeted this simple message of thanks in response to the crash:

Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled, thanks for all your messages of support. I'm flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team.

— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) October 31, 2014

One of the two pilots on board was killed and the other was critically injured and has been transported to a hospital for treatment.

Watch video below, via CNN:

[Photo via screengrab]

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