

Virgin Galactic pilot recalls colleague's crash - Robadob
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33002052

======
PaulRobinson
There is a really good piece from Newsnight on Virgin Galactic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-gxmqUfQ80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-gxmqUfQ80)

I would encourage you to watch all of if you're interested in Virgin Galactic.

It is pretty clear to me that they have one last chance to get this right. If
they suffer another catastrophic failure any time in their next 4-5 flights,
they will need to shut down. The fact they do not seem to be addressing design
flaws concerns me. If I were a customer I'd be seeking a refund.

I hope my pessimism proves to be unfounded and they usher in a new era, but
right now it must be hard for all of them over there.

~~~
7952
I am not an engineer, but it occurs to me that high-velocity aerodynamic
flight is still a seriously difficult problem; and one best avoided if not
actually neccessary. The resemblance to an aicraft hides the fact that it is
something completely different at various stages of its flight. And in all
these stages there are different problems that could occur, and limited
experience of those issues.

~~~
Gravityloss
Looking at it from another angle, configuration changes are often a source of
problems.

So here the plane has two aerodynamic configurations, aircraft mode and
shuttlecock mode. (Technically being carried is also one, and being a rocket
vs glider is debatable.)

Now the wrong mode was entered at the wrong time, more precisely at the wrong
dynamic pressure (altitude and speed) and disaster struck.

It'd be nice to avoid having to have such modes but with current power sources
it's probably unavoidable to have some. Staging is a mode change as well. (If
you were powered by say, antimatter, you could make the rocket a big stainless
steel ball with just a powerful engine that could take anything and fly in any
attitude, almost at any speed at any altitude without breaking up. Aerodynamic
moments would be tiny.)

Airplanes also have mode limitations, like that you can't extend the landing
gear at high speeds.

------
Already__Taken
I'm sceptical how the co-pilot somehow did the single most wrong thing to this
aircraft possible (unhinging the wing).

There must be some interesting report to be had on how design can kill if that
is what went wrong.

It's a fun exercise think about how this kind of failure can be compensated
while always having to ask, what if that compensation also fails.

The flight computer could easily work out that the wing can only be unlocked
AFTER the violent acceleration only during a complete free-fall, but then it's
no problem thinking of a hundred ways that computer could fail. Plus you
probably want a manual override anyway to the lock etc.

If that was actually my job I'd never sleep easy.

~~~
codeulike
Its an experimental aircraft doing test flights, I don't think they spend a
lot of time trying to make it blunderproof. Theres a million things the test
pilots could do to endanger the craft. I imagine they mostly just assume that
the pilots will not mess up.

~~~
xanderstrike
Exactly. A pilot could also fly it into the ground, or into a building, or
into WKII. Do we need physical safety mechanisms to prevent this? Or can we
depend on pilot training?

------
codeulike
No new info there. We've known for ages that one of the pilots unlocked the
feathering system at the wrong time.

------
nedwin
It's a tough problem to solve but Virgin Galactic have claimed they will be
ready for passengers "in less than 2 years) every year since they launched. In
2004.

------
imglorp
I'm curious what's the government restriction to photography of the assembly
process. Is this an export controls thing?

First, you can already see this stuff on youtube. And second, there are some
advancements here but they seem of more commercial interest than military. And
third, they're still having engine trouble (they just did a major tech pivot)
so it's not clear you'd want to copy it anyway.

~~~
vermontdevil
It's the ITAR:

[https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html](https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar.html)

------
Shivetya
I had not realized how delayed this project had become, crash or no crash. It
does seem odd that something so vital to the safety of the craft wasn't
protected by systems to warn the pilots. It might be, but I am thinking along
the lines of treating it like stall warnings or such or having an interlock
that cannot be thwarted easily

------
ohitsdom
What's with the title? No details have emerged (although the full report is
due in a few months). Even BBC's title is misleading. "Virgin Galactic pilot
recalls colleague's crash"\- he said he couldn't see anything.

~~~
sctb
We changed the title from "Virgin Galactic crash details emerge" to that of
the article.

~~~
Robadob
That was the original title at the time of submission, they appear to have
updated the title (and maybe the article) since.

------
throwaway12357
Reading this I can't help comparing it against SpaceX.

SpaceX is actually 2 years older than Virgin. But SpaceX is Getting Things
Done at warp speed for some years now, while Virgin Galactic keeps having
multiple crashes. Despite SpaceX having a harder mission.

Is it all due to the Elon Musk effect?

What's the secret?

~~~
mikeash
I just figured that Virgin Galactic doesn't have nearly the resources that
SpaceX had or has. Getting stuff into orbit with hundreds of millions of
dollars to spend would be easier than getting stuff into sub-orbit with
peanuts to spend.

But then I checked Wikipedia and:

"After a claimed investment by Virgin Group of US$100 million, in 2010 the
sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, Aabar Investments group, acquired a 31.8%
stake in Virgin Galactic for US$280 million, receiving exclusive regional
rights to launch tourism and scientific research space flights from the United
Arab Emirates capital. In July 2011, Aabar invested a further US$100
million...."

On the SpaceX side, according to this page, SpaceX spent $390 million
developing Falcon 1 _and_ Falcon 9, total:

[http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/05/31/nasa-analysis-
falcon-...](http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/05/31/nasa-analysis-
falcon-9-cheaper-traditional-approach/)

I don't know what the difference is. Maybe this is another example of how
people should stop trying to use airplanes to get to space.

~~~
xanderstrike
The difference probably has to do with the fact that SpaceX has a functional
revenue model beyond what's essentially a pre-order. Further down in the
Wikipedia article for SpaceX, as of 2012 they had taken in over $4 billion in
lifetime revenue. Also, they got a $1 billion investment from Google and
Fidelity in exchange for 8.333% of the company this past January.

I think the answer really is money, SpaceX has more of it because it has built
a product it can actually sell right now.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Funding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Funding)

~~~
mikeash
That seems backwards. They didn't have ongoing revenue until they proved
themselves capable. Their early days were a similar situation to Virgin
Galactic now, but, apparently, with even less money and doing harder stuff.

