> An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance” and that an “investigation is ongoing.”
So I don't know where that whole narrative of the article causing the action is coming from. The investigation was already ongoing and it seems highly unlikely that bureaucrats rush something within 24 hours just because of an article in the newyorker.
I also doubt that the FAA investigation would have much to do with the major narrative of the article.
From their perspective, the flight went off course for 2 mins, and they're looking for the proximate cause. They're looking for a specific safety issue, not any underlying generalized sense of a rotten safety culture at the company.
The acute problem might lead directly to a bigger general issue, if there's some direct evidence of fudged risk analysis or some specific, similar, overtly wrong behavior.
But more likely, it'll just be: we misjudged how it would handle that specific wind and were blown off course. Or something similar.
ETA: Has it even been established that the warning light/entry angle was the cause of or directly related to the airspace violation?
Either they deviated by a large margin or the area they were cleared for was too small because you don't just get mildly blown off course enough to exit a decent clearance area.
Maybe. There are lots of explanations for not having a larger test area, or for miscalculating a manually piloted crafts mach 3+ trajectory.
But you're missing the bigger
point.
It may have been completely unrelated to weather. By "something similar" I mean an innocent, isolated, non-cultural and non-conspiratorial explanation, that won't involve the FAA digging (or having to dig) any deeper than the superficial proximate cause.
It was a test flight of a manually piloted craft. To some extent, things will not go as expected.
Boeing and Russias last manned flights weren't manually controlled, and both had significant problems- early rocket shutdown and an unintentional, initially unstoppable thruster firing.
Yeah it needs investigating, but it's hardly unexpected or uncommon, especially for a test flight.
> An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance” and that an “investigation is ongoing.”
So I don't know where that whole narrative of the article causing the action is coming from. The investigation was already ongoing and it seems highly unlikely that bureaucrats rush something within 24 hours just because of an article in the newyorker.