Virgin Galactic pilot: 'I'm OK'

The pilot who survived the Virgin Galactic spaceship disaster has spoken of how he was thrown from the wreckage of SpaceShipTwo and plummeted nearly 16 kilometres back to Earth.

Peter Siebold, 43, suffered severe injuries in the crash having regained consciousness halfway into his fall. However he says that his experience gave him the composure to give a thumbs-up to colleagues in a sign of proof of life.

Mr Siebold spoke about the crash that killed his close friend and co-pilot Mike Alsbury, revealing that he blacked out as the craft disintegrated at 50,000ft but was saved by his emergency parachute.

"I must have lost consciousness at first. I can’t remember anything about what happened but I must have come to during the fall. I remember waving to the chase plane and giving them the thumbs-up to tell them I was OK. I know it’s a miracle I survived," he said.

According to The Mail on Sunday, he told his story to his father, Dr Klaus Siebold, who visited him at his ranch home on the edge of the Mojave Desert where the spaceship crashed.

Dr Siebold told The Mail on Sunday that Peter was ‘in good spirits’ despite suffering serious injuries, including a shattered shoulder.

Both pilots were strapped into standard pilot seats and wearing thin flight suits and emergency parachutes when SpaceShipTwo was released from its mothership WhiteKnightTwo shortly after 10am on October 31.

SpaceShipTwo exploded in flight after the ignition of one of its rockets. The suborbital passenger spaceship was being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism company and crashed during a test flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Stewart Witt, chief executive of Mojave Air and Space Port said officials cannot "speculate" on the cause of the disaster.

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In a statement, Virgin Galactic said “the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly, resulting in the loss of the vehicle.”

Photographer Ken Brown said the space tourism craft was released from the plane that carried it to high altitude, ignited its rocket motor and then exploded.

More than 800 people have paid or put down deposits to fly aboard the spaceship, which is carried to an altitude of about 45,000 feet and released. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to about 100 km high, giving passengers a view of the planet set against the blackness of space and a few minutes of weightlessness.

Celebrities who have signed up to Virgin's promise of a flight in space include: Leonardo Di Caprio, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Hawking, Katy Perry, Kate Winslet, Brangelina, Lance Bass.

Reports indicate that some passengers have since asked for a refund, taking up Virgin on their statement that they would accommodate people's change of hearts.

The spaceship is based on a prototype, called SpaceShipOne, which 10 years ago won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately developed manned spacecraft to fly in space.

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The accident was the second in a month by a U.S. space company. Two weeks prior, an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded 15 seconds after liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia, destroying a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station.