Virgin Galactic has vowed to pick up the pieces from Friday's fatal crash of its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which took the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury and sent pilot Peter Siebold to the hospital. The company promises to finish a new version of the vehicle, which is already 65 percent complete, and keep flying.

"While this has been a tragic setback, we are moving forward and will do so deliberately and with determination," the commercial spaceflight company said in a statement issued Tuesday morning.

The announcement came on the heels of findings by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that SpaceShipTwo's rocket motor apparently was not to blame for the crash that destroyed the vehicle last Friday. Instead, acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said, the spaceship moved its unique hinged tail booms—its so-called "feather"—into the upward-pointed position too early in the flight. The feather is designed to bring the craft back to a "care-free re-entry" on the return from its trip out of the atmosphere. It is not supposed to deploy early in the rocket-boosted phase of the flight, when SpaceShipTwo is still flying out of the atmosphere.

In a press conference Monday night, Hart gave a timeline of events leading up to the catastrophic breakup of the craft in the air.

• At 10:07:19 a.m. local time, SpaceShipTwo dropped as planned from its WhiteKnight2 jet plane mothership at about 45,000 feet over the Mojave Air & Space Port.

• Two seconds later, at 10:07:21, SpaceShipTwo's pilots fired the ship's single hybrid rocket motor, which operated normally.

• By 10:07:29, the ship was traveling Mach .94, or nearly the speed of sound.

• At 10:07:31, with the ship traveling Mach 1.02, Alsbury moved the feather Lock/Unlock lever from the locked position to the unlocked position. "Soon after that," Hart said in Monday night's press conference, "the feather itself began to deploy."

Even though Alsbury moved the lever too early in the flight (he was supposed to wait until the ship was traveling at Mach 1.4) the feather isn't supposed to deploy until one of the two pilots moves a second lever, which we know did not happen in this case. But with the feather prematurely deployed, the spaceship lost the optimum aerodynamic shape needed to rocket safely through the atmosphere and came apart in mid-air.

Two important facts have emerged during the early stages of the investigation that have likely given Virgin Group chief Richard Branson and the Virgin Galactic team the confidence to promise they'll push forward with SpaceShipTwo.

First, the engine that Virgin Galactic has been struggling to perfect apparently performed flawlessly. Friday's test was the first flight to use a new fuel mix made of nylon instead of synthetic rubber. The fact that the fuel performed well and appears unrelated to the disaster is a good thing for Virgin's dream of achieving regular passenger service to space.

Second, Friday's crash was apparently caused by a combination of human factors—which could include faulty cockpit displays—and mechanical trouble with a system—the feather—that has already proven itself numerous times in flight. In other words, although the crash represents a catastrophe for Virgin Galactic, a recovery seems achievable. Displays can be adjusted, pilots trained differently, and mechanical systems strengthened, all without a major rethink of the SpaceShipTwo design.

Hart said in Monday's press conference that the team investigating the crash would continue interviewing all the people involved, reviewing video and telemetry data, and examining pieces of the wreckage, which they have moved to a hangar. The whole process, which will conclude with NTSB issuing recommendations for avoiding a repeat of the disaster, could take a year.

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe campaign raising money for the wife and two children that pilot Mike Alsbury left behind has at this writing raised $94,000 and counting in just two days.

Virgin Galactic concluded its statement:

"With the guidance of the NTSB and the assurance of a safe path forward, we intend to move ahead with our testing program and have not lost sight of our mission to make space accessible for all. We owe it to all of those who have risked and given so much to stay the course and deliver on the promise of creating the first commercial spaceline."

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