Virgin 'spaceship' pilot 'unlocked tailbooms' going through sound barrier

Re: When can we see the apologies?

Chris Miller,

There's nothing wrong with honest speculation. But rolling out the supposed 'experts' to say that we've been warning all the time against your rocket motors, within hours of an unexplained crash is unacceptable.

There's nothing wrong with saying that such warnings were issues. So long as you make it clear that the cause is unknown. And also make it clear that engine explosions aren't the only reason planes crash. An airframe can only take a certain amount of stress, and can catastrophically fail at those kinds of speeds, if something goes wrong. As appears to have happened here.

The articles in the Guardian and Telegraph that I read were clearly trying to insinuate that Virgin and Scaled Composites were taking huge risks, that they'd been warned against, and doing it anyway. And using experts I've not heard of to back themselves up, while not explaining who those people were, or what their standing was. As against Scaled Composites.

As it turns out, the engines don't look to be to blame. Not that this still might not be down to negligence, or rushing to meet a deadline. But perhaps some evidence might be in order first?

Re: When can we see the apologies?

"but if one of my computers goes TU, the first question that occurs to me is "what have we just changed?"

This only works if you're a tinkerer, and you're changing things all the time.

I constantly get "my tv/car/toaster/whatever is broken, and I have no idea at all what's wrong - it was working fine yesterday".

Firstly, the "I have no idea why" is moot, because you're not trained, qualified, instructed or experienced in the device to make a judgement like that. Secondly, the fact it was "working fine yesterday" is no indicator into what went wrong. Faults are like that.

Re: When can we see the apologies?

I think my hindsight was working quite well:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2346016

Tom Bower is a Florian Mueller like character, available for a paid doom and gloom opinion anytime, rather than a decent investigative journo.

Re: When can we see the apologies?

"And perhaps we should ban all speculation until the NTSB publish their report - but that's against human nature."

I'd not ban it, only discourage speculations that don't conform with current news conference releases from the NTSB. I happened to watch video of said news conference, but seem to have missed the mention of the boom assembly moving after being unlocked.

When going trans-sonic, things get *really* ugly, as highly significant stresses are induced down the line of travel of the aircraft/spacecraft.

Things get uglier when the press/public gets involved, as mach 1 is relative in that arena, mach 1 for an operational craft is when *all* components are well and truly outside of the shockwave.

As the attitude assembly was at the trailing edge, it very may well be that the shockwave induced unintended movement, secondary to mechanical locks being disengaged.

The real question is *why* the locks were disengaged. Procedural flaw (not supported by current documents, as reported in press conference by the NTSB)? Operational friendliness design flaw (control is near a very similar appearing control that *is* on a checklist)? Informal test procedure practiced by a test pilot (unlikely, from personal experience with test pilots)? A case of intra-cranial flatulence on the part of the copilot (something quite well in the realm of possibility, on error, goto human)? Around 100000 things not considered from this highly sparse information?

Based upon what is *known*, which is an astonishing amount of information parsed by the investigators due to the craft being highly experimental, for all that we know, based upon this sparse information, it very well could have been a Decepticon moving the copilot's arm and hand.

The latter being the most, erm, improbable of events, as Transformers are either an electronic device or a fictitious character from a rather well earning toy line and entertainment franchise.

Re: Right Direction?

@Mage: You do know the long term plan is to use the White Knight mothership to launch rockets that deploy satellites?

Re: "Wealthy customers have signed up in large numbers to see a black sky "

"You seem to have forgotten the recent deaths in the Himalayas ......"

What's that got to do with it. He didn't say climb a dangerous mountain and for that matter the stars against a black sky were magnificent only a mile from Salcombe with our boat tied to its pontoon.

Re: "Wealthy customers have signed up in large numbers to see a black sky "

"If you're thinking of something less risky, you seem to have forgotten....."

I wasn't - I was pointing out that of the many reasons for undertaking a sub-orbital trip the black sky was a pretty wimpy one as it could easily be experienced in many ways.

Re: "Wealthy customers have signed up in large numbers to see a black sky "

"Call the Waaahambulance"

No, call to ban the lot. That's the usual drill.

E-substances, explosions, experiments, expeditions, enterprises, endeavours, extravaganza, expensive entertainment, etc, etc. And that's just an entry list of enormous horrors that are enthralling our endangered society. Don't even dare to look at what comes under letters p and t.

Re: Why...

You've entirely missed the point. I did not ask why he attempted the flight, but why he deployed the feathering mechanism extremely early. In fact he did break a rule, something test pilots sometimes have to do. The feathering mechanism is not supposed to be deployed until Mach 1.4 is reached.

Re: Why...

While it may be that the craft did something against expectation (and upvoted for pointing that out to the AC) it's just one person saying what seems to have appeared on some of the available data, and of course if accurate the investigation will need to find out why that occured. Better not to speculate on what happened until a full assessment is made.

Very sad for the pilots and their friend and family.

Re: Why...

I'm of the observation that one does NOT release the safety until one is ready to pull the trigger. Murphy is always lying in wait. Yeah.. crap happens but interlocks are there to minimize that. It's very possible the checklist said this action should be performed at this time... but all this still needs to be sorted out.

It's funny (and not in a ha-ha way), to me, if we go back over the last several days of commentard's speaking up.. the majority seemed to blame the fuel and motor even though the available photos didn't show an explosion and the observers on the ground didn't see one. I'm curious what started the feathering... mechanical failure? Servo failure? Maintenance screwup? The NTSB is very good at what they do but it will take some time to examine all the data.