Michael Alsbury

Michael Alsbury was an American test pilot for Scaled Composites, killed on test flight PF04 of the Virgin Galactic Space Ship Two VSS Enterprise on 31 October 2014.

 At the time of his death, he had 1800 flight hours under his belt, 1600 of it at Scaled as a test pilot and engineer. In 2013, he was the co-recipient of the Ray E. Tenhoff Award from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.

Alsbury graduated Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering.

Alsbury was married to Michelle Saling, for 12 years, and had two children, both under 5, at the time of his death.

Alsbury joined Scaled in 2001, and began working as a project engineer and pilot.

In April 2013, he served as copilot to Mark Stucky on the first powered flight for VSS Enterprise and SpaceShipTwo.

In 2013, he received the Ray E. Tenhoff Award for the most outstanding technical paper at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots symposium along with Mark Stucky and Clint Nichols.

SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise crash On 31 October 2014, along with Peter Siebold, Alsbury was test flying the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, VSS Enterprise.

The craft suffered an explosion shortly after its release from its mothership, resulting in the loss of VSS Enterprise, which crashed in the California Mojave Desert.   While Siebold was injured he was able to parachute to safety, but Alsbury was unable to exit the spacecraft and his remains were found still strapped to his seat in the fuselage. It was the 9th time that Alsbury had flown aboard the aircraft.