Virgin Galactic Spaceship 2 crashed

[GrauGeist]

Just saw this on the news...

During Spaceship 2's final test flight over the Mojave desert, there was a catastrophic failure.

According to the early reports, of the two crew members, there is one fatality and one seriously injured.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes: 1 Dead, 1 Injured - NBC News

A sad day for aviation

 

[Siddley]

That is awful news

 

[razor1uk]

T'is a great shame, my Earthly condolences to those involved.

 

[Capt. Vick]

A sad milestone for commercial space flight. My condolences to the pilots families.

 

[pbehn]

A sad loss

 

[Gnomey]

Very sad loss. Very sorry to hear of the fatalities. Big set back for commercial space flight.

 

[stan reid]

Does anyone know what sort of flight this was intended to be? Was it just an engine test or did they intend to fly up to at least 50 miles altitude?

 

[razor1uk]

The mission as far as I can find, was supposed to be a test flight for the new plastic rocket fuel and see how it performed at altitude in low temp and low pressure conditions, after ground test showed it performed well enough. AFIAK, 2 crew were onboard, one was unfortunately wounded fatality, and the other was severely injured.

Allegedly their might have been an accidental activation of the 'feathering' aero-braking system during the rocket motor acceleration testing phase, and that it is possible that a form of dual activation restriction safety lock was not used upon the 'feathering' control switch/lever.

The feathering system when activated hydraulically tilts roughly the rear halves of the vehicles wings their tips upwards to create aerodynamic buckets to catch the very (near vacuum like 'space'..) thin air at very high altitudes to slow the craft down enough that it cannot resist gravity via its speed, which is allowed by the thinness of the air - in effect, a form of orbit.

As the vehicles vertical speed increase with the loss of altitude the wings are returned to normal 'flight' mode to allow full controllability again and reduce the aerodynamic stresses from the feathering mode as the thickening air would create massive stresses of forces that would severely damage the craft if they remained in such a setting ..as would any craft with airbrakes that are consist of 40% + of its wing area.

Space is said to start at around 90 - 100km (where a naked unprotected and unsupported human would die instantly), but in reality the last layer of our atmosphere 'The Ionosphere' carries on up to about 600km in altitude, 2 to 3 times higher than the ISS typically orbits at.

There of yet news-wide is little to no hint of the fuel being a problem.

 

[GrauGeist]

...There of yet news-wide is little to no hint of the fuel being a problem.

The wreckage wasn't even cool yet, before this female started crowing about how she tried to warn that this would happen, how she predicted the propulsion system would fail etc. etc. and the media jumped on that juicy bit of "not even close to what happened but God it will boost ratings and readership" information like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.

So for the longest time, everyone "assumed" the crash was due to the propulsion unit, because of that.

Even now, after the NTSB released preliminary findings, we see the conspiracy nut-bags out there screaming cover-up, that this woman's findings were real and they are trying to prevent her from getting credit. I even got into an argument with one of these idiots, and he was almost yelling in my face that she deserves credit for predicting this catastrophe and I looked him square in the eye and said "have you ever stopped to think, that since they changed the propellant, that she may have sabotaged the craft in order to make herself correct?" and the guy just stared at me for several seconds (took a while for the squirrel cage to spool up) and his eyes widened and he said "oh...oh my God!" and turned around and left.

The moral of that encounter, fight fire with fire...

 

[razor1uk]

On this side of the water, this crowing person is unknown and didn't make it into the news I believe (..unless she is the person who got their spiel edited into roughly a 5 second clip about a seeing a fireball, before another alleged eyewitness gave was given a longer and more credible sounding account of seeing debris), she is on your side of the pond, crowing for her 15 minutes of fame (and likely induced by media payment schemes).

On Wedneday evening, over here, an apparent aero-space engineer who has worked with companies that have space experience suggested that from some on board video that it could seem to be related to an accidental operation of the feathering control and that there was nothing wrong with the fuel or motor.

It is true that he too could be just expresing his opinion, or that he is lying or leaking info. Still it sounds more plausable than this crower you speak off (apart from the subtle sexism due to her allowed grandstanding to/for/by the media over there) I agree, most conspiritorals are nut-bags, and 99% of the time I ignore them once I get a whiff of there bourbon.
I feel similar pangs of guilt for thinking that I might be aiding her, specifiacally if she is cashing in on your/her own medias ticket, then that her ill gotten choice and I'm sure many will ignore her for it soon enough like the rest of those who jump up and down about space-lizardmen, secret WW2 icebases saucers, men dressed in hairy suits other wierdness that seems to swim around preporting to be facts/documentary evidence to support their own college a-credited direputable income methods.

It is true that I with many other on learning of a new fuel being used and their being some problem could initially think that might be part of the problem, partially from a possibly seeming fictional account of a fireball, and the way it was initially told by the media over here, my apologies if I seem to give her credence.

Hence why I posted my later comment above. I edited my first comment, at the time I was posting what goes for offical news over from the BBC (via Radio 4/World News) I avoid most tabloids, dislike Murdoc news (who Eliot Carver in that Bond film is based upon in jest, although I think that that charactature of is likely closer to the truth in analogeous way).

I'm glad you befuddled the 'everything is a conpiracy' guy, if they're that far gone down the route to believe any and all things possible, then whats wrong with a little mental 'trip up' upon them eh GG

 

[GrauGeist]

Well, the female (I won't gratify her by using her name) is an "aerospace expert" who claims she has been warning about the N2O issue for many years. The news media gobbled that up and ran with it, unfortunately, the HS2 engine that Spaceship 2 was using different propulsion compounds than what she is yammering about.

She also was being quoted with speculation and erronous information even before investigators arrived at the crash site.

I find that totally unethical and absolutely outside of any form of profesionlism on her and the media's part.

There was even a lengthy piece in the Telegraph about her and her "predictions" about 6 days ago...

 

[razor1uk]

So she is milking the circuses for her paycheck, and damning all who don't agree 100% with her theories, sounds like a troll.

While I admit the uisng NiO2 sounds dangerous, if it ratios are correct, little oxygen is needed for combustion at altitude, and what there would be wouldn't be enough for ground based concentrations as used in V8 drag motors where their are much greater quantities of other elements too - doesn't O2 become O3 at such high altitudes, and if so, could/does that men the it works similar upon Nirtous at very high altitudes i.e; Ni2 O3 ?

 

[GrauGeist]

I will admit that I have little working knowledge on rocket propulsion other than what I read, but the original engine for Spaceship 2 did indeed used HTPB and N2O: Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene with Nitreous Oxide as oxidizer.

However, the HTPB engine was replaced last spring with a different engine that used a Thermoplastic Polyamide fuel which did include N2O as an oxidizer, but had a much different performance profile than what the woman was referring to.

I am not sure if her jaw was just swinging freely at the word Nitrous Oxide or if she was simply unaware that Scaled Composites had changed engines.

 

[model299]

The fact the pilot survived the breakup at near Mach 1 at over 50,000 is just miraculouc IMO. I read that one test pilot interviewed conjectured that the pilot, a very experienced test pilot, may have intentionally free-falled (Is that how you would say that?) until 15,000-20,000 feet before pulling his ripcord to escape the upper atmosphere more rapidly.

My sincerest condolences to the late co-pilot's family and friends.

 

[GrauGeist]

More information: They have interviewed the surviving pilot and he confirms the boom deployed prematurely when the other pilot unlocked it.

Surviving SpaceShipTwo Pilot Interviewed by NTSB | Flying Magazine