
Pilot Who Survived Space Crash Says Parachute Opened Itself - chdir
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-12/pilot-who-survived-spacecraft-crash-says-parachute-opened-itself.html
======
wil421
>The subject’s last memory before passing out was the realization that the
water on his tongue was boiling, according to NASA.

That is not something I would ever want to experience.

I wonder how similar this environment is the the SR71 that disintegrated [1].
Luckily the SR71 pilots wore space suits with this happened. Otherwise I dont
think he would have survived.

[1][http://www.916-starfighter.de/SR-71_Waever.htm](http://www.916-starfighter.de/SR-71_Waever.htm)

~~~
thekingofspain
That doesn't mean the water was super hot, though.

~~~
wil421
The next sentence in the article is:

>Water boils at lower temperatures as pressure decreases.

~~~
viewer5
So it wouldn't feel boiling-hot, just weird and bubbly?

~~~
lutorm
Anyone who's put liquid nitrogen in their mouth (and if you haven't, you've
missed out) knows the feeling.

~~~
scoot
Please don't: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9594000/Warning-over-
liqui...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9594000/Warning-over-liquid-
nitrogen-drinks-after-girl-loses-stomach.html)

~~~
lutorm
Yeah, you should obviously not actually ingest it.

~~~
DigitalJack
The risk of shattered teeth stopped me from trying that one.

------
chdir
Crash investigation (Source - NTSB :
[http://www.ntsb.gov/news/2014/141112.html](http://www.ntsb.gov/news/2014/141112.html))

According to the pilot, he was unaware that the feather system had been
unlocked early by the copilot. His description of the vehicle motion was
consistent with other data sources in the investigation. He stated that he was
extracted from the vehicle as a result of the break-up sequence and unbuckled
from his seat at some point before the parachute deployed automatically.
Recorded information from telemetry, non-volatile memory, and videos are being
processed and validated to assist the investigative groups.

... The investigation is ongoing. Any future updates will be issued as events
warrant.

~~~
smackfu
Yes, that's actually the only source of new info.

~~~
TrevorJ
I was also interested in the fast that they weren't in pressure suits.
Apparently the ingress/egress hatch is so small as to preclude them wearing
basic safety equipment. I'm becoming less and less sympathetic to Virgin
Galactic the more I hear.

~~~
jostmey
Cut the company some slack. Space flight is hard. There are physical
constraints imposed by the laws of Nature that have to be carefully weighed.
It is easy to forget this fact when all you ever do is software design or
whatever.

~~~
bunderbunder
Not too much slack. It's true that space flight is hard. But it's also true
that Virgin Galactic is a company based entirely around sub-orbital space
tourism. The level of risk we should consider acceptable for what's
essentially an ultra-high-priced amusement park ride is rather lower than the
level of risk we should consider acceptable for space exploration.

~~~
4ad
People who pay to go can make their own decision if the risk is acceptable to
them or not. It's not anyone else's business to decide what the acceptable
level of risk is.

~~~
trhway
>People who pay to go can make their own decision if the risk is acceptable to
them or not. It's not anyone else's business to decide what the acceptable
level of risk is.

until they are a MIT trained airspace engineers, i doubt they are able to
estimate the risk and thus to make a fully informed decision on their own.
This is why it is official government agencies' business to at least establish
minimum acceptable risk baselines.

~~~
c1sc0
And that's how you end up in a society where all risk-taking is banned to the
fringes. No thanks, I'd much rather sign the "waiver from hell". High-risk
activities CAN be self-regulated by industry, i.e. skydiving.

~~~
bunderbunder
I'm no expert on this subject, but a small amount of Googling suggests that
rumors of skydiving's lack of regulation in the US have been greatly
exaggerated. For example, you can't just pack your own chute - there's a
special FAA certification you have to get before you're allowed to do that.

The rules I'm seeing seem more like the ones that govern recreational sailing,
which is a topic I'm more familiar with: If you're just doing it on your own,
sailing is fairly lightly regulated. Your boat needs to meet some minimum
requirements for safety equipment and the like, but for the most part all the
rules for recreational sailing are voluntary and self-imposed by the
community.

But all that goes out the window once you start doing it commercially. If you
want to take tourists out on a day sail, you need to be a licensed captain and
there's a whole host of federally-imposed rules about how you operate your
boat that come into play.

Virgin Galactic isn't analogous to some guy day-sailing in his own boat.
SpaceShipOne would have been, but SpaceShipTwo is much more analogous to
commercial sailing, which _is_ comprehensively regulated for the sake of
consumer protection.

------
clueless123
To survive this is absolutely incredible, the only pitty is that the article
lacks so many interesting details!

Was he wearing the chute on his back? (So,he had to get out of his seat to be
able to open)

What kind of AAD was he wearing ? (was it an off the shelf AAD like a
Cypress?)

What where it's settings? pass through such altitude at such vertical speed to
open..

Any one knows? any links?

~~~
smackfu
Good thing: NTSB will release a full report at some point with all these
answers.

Bad thing: Until then, they tend to not say much.

~~~
JshWright
Some might consider that to be two good things...

------
jobu
After all the speculation about engine failure, it sounds like the culprit is
a combination of poor design and pilot error.

The "Feather System" was unlocked by a pilot too early in the flight, then air
currents caused it to activate in atmosphere instead of near vacuum - likely
tearing the ship apart.

~~~
joezydeco
But part of the flight procedure is to actually unlock the feathers slightly
later in the flight - at Mach 1.4.

The article states this is to make sure the feathers are operational before
heading upward, but that seems like a really narrow margin of time to execute
this test.

~~~
malandrew
While speed is a factor, it isn't the only factor. The altitude at which they
are unlocked matters as well. Moving at Mach 1.0 at a lower altitude could
subject the plane to far greater forces than at Mach 1.4 at a much higher
altitude, where the air is thinner.

Furthermore, where the force is coming from probably also plays a role. The
angle of the force applied to the feathers may change when the force is not
coming from a fall, but is instead the result of the engines provide force
from behind the fuselage.

------
001sky
This was by design, not magic.

~~~
jessaustin
Did the copilot's chute also deploy?

~~~
teleclimber
Apparently yes. He was found in the wreckage, strapped in his seat, with the
chute partially deployed. It probably deployed automatically during the fall
and shot out between the pilot and the seat.

~~~
jessaustin
Perhaps NTSB will have some thoughts about how to coordinate seat separation
and chute deployment.

~~~
teleclimber
If you don't have an ejection seat, getting kicked out of your seat inside a
cockpit doesn't sound terribly helpful. Inflight breakup situations where the
pilot breaks free in their seat are so rare that this would probably would
cause more accidents than it would save lives.

Ejection seats do kick you out of the seat automatically sometime after
ejection so that the automatic parachute deployment can work.

~~~
jessaustin
_Inflight breakup situations where the pilot breaks free in their seat are so
rare..._

Do intuitions developed about airframe integrity in an aviation context
necessarily apply to spaceflight? Normally I wouldn't think automatic chute
deployment would have much value without a full ejection seat, although in
this case it saved a life. Did the designers of this craft actually have a
meeting in which they decided that the likelihood of this exact sort of
incident is so much higher than an intact-vehicle incident that an automatic
chute is warranted while an ejection seat is not?

For some reason I suspect that a couple of years from now we'll be reading a
tell-all about the culture of risk-taking at "The Spaceship Company". (Whether
such a book is warranted or not.)

------
popeshoe
Does anybody know if it's common that an aircraft can be structurally
compromised like that due to user error?

I can easily imagine the stress on the airframe doing manoeuvres like this, if
I were a pilot I'd be absolutely terrified that it were possible for me to
flip a switch and just have the vehicle I'm in disintegrate around me.

edit: whoops, commented on a day old thread, what a dingus

------
kazinator
> _“I can’t imagine the forces he must have experienced being thrown out of
> the aircraft,” Sventek, who spent 31 years in the U.S. Air Force, said in an
> interview._

Some initial impulse from the ejecting motion of the craft breakup, and then
immediately after losing contact, the only net force should be the one from
air drag due to the velocity. There is gravity, of course, but in free-fall,
that force is balanced by your acceleration so you don't feel it. As you reach
terminal velocity, it rises toward 1g.

That air drag would be a big force, though, when you're thrown into the air at
the craft's velocity.

~~~
pwnna
Did a little bit of a back of the envelop calculation on the subject, so this
maybe completely bogus, be aware.

It would seem like the temperature that the pilot experienced upon ejection at
Mach 1 at 15000m (when they broke apart) would be about -13C, which is
reasonably survivable[1]. The pressure experienced is probably around 22kPa
absolute, which in theory will generate anywhere between 6 - 20g[2]. Not
pleasant, but survivable.

Given these, it takes a lot of luck to survive those conditions (1/5th
atmosphere, extreme acceleration, low temperature when he falls), but it might
be more survivable than we think (this is much better than exploding and
ejecting at lower altitudes)

[1]: Calculation via the stagnation temperature at that speed for the standard
condition at that altitude (Temperature ~= 217K, P ~= 12kPa)

[2]: Stagnation pressure on him in the front of the body (23kPa), ambient at
the back. Average male body surface area is about 2m^2, depending on the
geometry you might be able to get down to a quarter of that. Throw in the mass
of the pilot (70kg? 90kg?), you should get accelerations in those ranges.

Edit: some more interpretations

~~~
durandal1
Your temperature is just plain wrong, the standard atmosphere model states
-6.5°C per 1000m. This is means that the temperature was -97.5C below surface
temp. So -70C is more likely.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Atmosphe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Atmosphere)

~~~
mariuolo
Could the low temperature have helped with regard to thin air?

I'm no expert, but I seem to recall that cold limits the damage from hypoxia.

~~~
teraflop
Hypothermia does provide some protection against hypoxia-induced brain damage.
However, exposure to air at -13C for only a few minutes is very unlikely
affect your core body temperature enough to cause hypothermia. And anyway, the
time taken to fall from 15km to a more tolerable altitude would probably not
be long enough to cause that type of damage in the first place.

------
spb
Warning: link plays loud video shortly after opening.

------
callesgg
Are they seriously going to blame the dead pilot for the crash.

Even if he might have caused it, playing the blame game does not feel very
professional. I would be very careful before making such a statement.

~~~
ars
How do you manage to say both of those things at once?

He caused it, but he's not to blame?

I mean if you want to talk about other systemic factors then fine. But
otherwise your request is nonsensical.

~~~
callesgg
It could be cause they did not train him properly, or other factors out of his
control. Who knows....

~~~
c1sc0
While I agree it's useful to look at the bigger picture to avoid future
mistakes. He pulled the switch, the buck stops with him. Could be fatigue,
could be bad training, but ultimately for the purpose of the investigation
it's human error.

