Virgin Galactic is to keep its spacecraft on the ground until the Federal Aviation Administration completes an investigation into a problem that occurred during Richard Branson’s historic flight into space in July.
Tthe FAA statement, reported for Reuters, it was clear, concise and not entirely surprising.
“Virgin Galactic cannot return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines that the mishap-related issues do not affect public safety.”
Oof.
The base of Virgin Galactic’s two SpaceShipTwo spacecraft arrives a day after the New Yorker released a alarming article detailing the problems that occurred in the July 11 flight that took the founding billionaire Branson, along with three other passengers and two pilots, at an altitude of 86 km above sea level, which a little lucky it qualifies as “space.”
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The base of SpaceShipTwo means a scheduled flight by the end of this month, in which VSS Unit it was supposed to deliver members of the Italian Air Force into suborbital space, it probably won’t happen. Grounding also removes much of the brilliance surrounding Virgin Galactic’s space tourism offering, which is fixed charge $ 450,000 per seat.
In fact, the Vol Unity 22, as far as we knew so far, seemed to go exactly as planned, but as the New York article reveals, pilots David Mackay and Mike Masucci ignored the warning lights during the climb. Specifically, the pilots issued an “entry slip cone warning,” indicating that VSS Unit it wasn’t going up strong enough and that the spacecraft wouldn’t have enough energy to glide back to the designated runway at Spaceport America, New Mexico.
And flying out of that cone-shaped volume of space, the spacecraft deviated beyond the mandatory airspace for the mission, which it did for 1 minute and 41 seconds. This is a big no for the FAA, which applies these rules.
The New York article suggests that the pilots should have aborted the mission when the warning lights were turned on. The warning should have served as the discouraging Monopoly card – go straight to the track prison, don’t go into orbital space, and don’t charge $ 200. If the pilots had done so, however, Richard Branson probably would not have been the first billionaire to arrive in space, especially considering that Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin succeeded same deed a few weeks later. Instead of aborting the mission, however, the pilots allowed VSS Unitthe engines will run at full speed for the full minute required.
I contacted Virgin Galactic for information on the company issue and ongoing FAA research.
“As we said earlier, we are working in collaboration with the FAA to address the short time the spacecraft fell below the allowable altitude during Unity 22 flight,” a company spokesman explained in an email electronic. “We take it seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the problem and determining how to prevent this from happening in future missions.”
The spokesman admits that the flight path did not go as planned, although a “controlled and intentional flight path” is what allowed VSS Unit to reach space and land at the company’s spaceport in New Mexico.
“At no time were passengers and crew endangered as a result of this change of course, and at no time did the ship travel over any population center or cause danger to the public,” he said. said the spokesman, adding that FAA representatives were “present in our control room during the flight and in the post-flight debriefs.”
In an email sent to Gizmodo yesterday, Virgin Galactic claimed that strong winds were responsible for the change in trajectory and that “pilots and systems were monitoring the trajectory to make sure it remained within the parameters of the mission.”
Mark Stucky, former director of flight testing at Virgin Galactic, says it’s balderdash. The “facts are that the pilots could not cut to get the right pace, the winds were well within the limits, did nothing to fix the trajectory error and entered the airspace of the class A without authorization, “he said. he tweeted on September 1, Stucky was fired shortly after the Unity 22 mission after publicly expressing his concerns about Virgin Galactic’s security practices.
And now we look forward to the results of the FAA investigation. But I have to think that the FAA probably doesn’t like pilots passing by warning lights and, as a result, venturing out without wanting to leave mandatory airspace. That Virgin Galactic is bringing paying customers to the edge of space will also likely be considered by the FAA probe. As for the future of this space tourism offering, this incident, further research, and claims of a deteriorating safety culture at Virgin Galactic mean Paying customers may want to think twice about taking a ride on a spaceship built by Richard Branson.
Month: The concept of China for a Martian helicopter seems tremendously familiar.