After two high-profile commercial space accidents in less than a week, advocates of private space ventures told attendees of a student space conference that, while saddened by the failures, they were still confident about the future of the overall industry. "It is a time of reflection for us all," former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in a speech here Nov. 1 during SpaceVision 2014, the annual conference of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). Garver was referring to the Oct. 28 failure of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares launch vehicle that destroyed a Cygnus cargo spacecraft bound for the international space station, and the Oct. 31 crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceplane during a test flight, killing one pilot and injuring the other.
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