Breaking: Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Two Crashes

a reply to: Zaphod58

You did.

Do you think they will?

a reply to: Phage

If they can get some help, yes. If they're paying for it themselves, I seriously doubt they'll build another ship.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Investors may be hard to come by. I wonder if they are going to refund the prepaid passengers.

Don't get me wrong, this saddens me. But it does, once again, bring home the message that space is not safe.

a reply to: Phage

And that it's very very hard to get to.

As for investors, they MIGHT be able to get some, considering how well the program has gone to date. They've had a couple of accidents, but this is the worst of them. They got pretty much all the way through the X Prize intact, so people might look at it as a decent investment. I'm sure they'll put some serious strings on it though.

Daily Mail Online has some decent images here.

Click on the images to view the original photos:

Fatal moment: The Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo plane is pictured above coming to pieces after a mid-air launch uses an experimental rocket fuel. It crashed to the ground in a remote region of California's Mojave Desert, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another

Fatal launch: SpaceShipTwo, left, is seen above moments after it detatched from WhiteKnightTwo, the twin-hulled airplane which carries the main vessel to 45,00ft before dropping it to make the sub-orbital space flight by itself

Pulling away: The rocket engine, using a new plastic-based polyamide fuel, can be seen starting to fire, right, as SpaceShipTwo streaks away from the carrier

Explo sion: Fragments of the plane plummeted to earth after it started to break apart, white smoke pouring, in the fatal accident

Decli ne and fall: How the plane climbed tens of thousands of feet before exploding and plummeting to earth

SpaceShipTwo was flying under rocket power after being released from its mothership - then Virgin tweeted that it had 'experienced an in-flight anomaly.'

a reply to: NonsensicalUserName

Civilian aircraft and automobiles are mature technologies, (relatively mature).

Dismissingvehicle recalls and all. Teslas keep catching fire, too. I agree with what else you said.

I would add since I was a witness to the moon landings I am amazed that back then besides the first fire on the pad and Apollo 13, there wasn't one catastrophic launch failure during the entire Apollo Missions.

To the moon and back seven times? Can we ever hope to be that proficient again?

a reply to: Phage

It brings home the message that these people are stupid for continuing to use technology that was inferior 50 years ago.

And the message that is sent, by the fact they still use this tech, I.E. designed to fail, comes to mind.

Meanwhile, back on the farm we just blindly believe everything we are told........

It seems that a handle that was not supposed to be operated until later in the flight was moved from the locked to the unlocked position by the copilot. A strange thing to do for an experienced test pilot.

a reply to: Mogget

What did the levers operate, do you know?

First i've heard of this possibly being pilot error, and not a structural failure of the airframe because the new fuel mix was too powerful.

Where did you get that info from mate?

a reply to: Phage

Not to nitpick, but they didn't even make it to 'space' did they?

Goes to show it's not just space that's not safe.

I have corrected my post, but essentially the lock/unlock handle was not supposed to be operated until the spaceplane was doing at least Mach 1.4, but it was switched from the locked to the unlocked position at just beyond Mach 1.0. I am not sure how much sooner this is than normal, but it is not normal procedure. However, the feather handle (which moves the struts to either side of the spaceplane fuselage from horizontal towards vertical) was NOT moved, but these struts still started to move towards the vertical position.

That being the case, it seems like the accident was due to a mix of pilot error and technical fault.

This is just armchair speculation. Only virgin know what the actual anomaly was.
a reply to: Mogget

a reply to: Nochzwei

They've already said that there is video of the crew unlocking the feathers at Mach 1,and that at that speed there was a possibility of them moving due to aerodynamic stresses. So no, it's not just armchair speculation.

a reply to: Zaphod58 The anomaly may have been yaw. On a previous flight, non powered glide back in October 2011 I think it was, with 3 on board, pilot, copilot (same guy) and engineer, they lost control of it and that same copilot operated the feathers (as in shuttlecock) and they regained control. Perhaps his unlocking them this time was because it was a rough ride and he thought they were going out of control again. Why else would an experienced guy do that? Pilot error my ass. For such an important aerodynamic aid it seems strange that it is necessary to unlock then pull a lever because that takes time which you might not have, and if you're going to unlock them its because you need them because you're gyrating but at that moment they can break loose, that is not at all clever.
I wonder how the future space passengers would respond to being in a constantly yawing craft?
One good thing did come out of this though, the new fuel didn't explode, despite the attempts of MSM!

a reply to: Flyinghaggis

He could have misheard the ground, or any number of other things. It's doubtful we'll ever know why he unlocked them, but the other pilot hasn't said anything about feeling like they were yawing or any other problems that have been announced yet.

Tests mostly always have glitches and failures. This is where mistakes are learned from and experiences built upon, no?

No conspiracy here, right?