Geez. Seeing Branson's comment that ..."we will rebuild it to make the next spaceship 100% safe..." makes me think that he doesn't understand the whole concept of flying at almost 2 times the speed of sound. Those two ideas aren't really compatible. You can do a lot to minimize risk...but to eliminate it down to zero? That is nonsense.
I used to work for a company with charismatic CEO. Sometimes they let their egos & imagination get ahead of what really is possible. Glad I was fired early.
You really can't expect him to say anything less than 100%. Can you imagine what the public comments would've been if he had said to make it 99% safe? The man understands flying better than most people. He also understands the nuances of public speech, especially one that plays on TV. One other thing, you always have to aim for that 100% even if it is not possible. It is the higher than actual expectations that helps get you to the actual and maybe a little beyond it.
I've known about this one for a while, and it always floors me how the entire project--from the design of the craft, the procedures for flying it, the training protocols, the lack of failsafes--was just the Devil Murphy's Playground from start to finish. Everything that _could_ be done wrong _was_ done wrong, and what's really amazing is that no one caught it and this didn't happen earlier in the project than it did!
Remember they had another fatal accident a few years back when a tank of nitrous oxide exploded during a cold flow test. These people are simply not ready for prime time.
You can’t de-risk everything, and shouldn’t try. Progress takes a certain amount of risk, and is usually made by the risk-takers - not the armchair quarterbacks or those demanding absolute safety in every venture.
The pitch up force was to great for the fuselage to handle. The onboard computer should have had a software program to unlock the feather system at the precise time & speed or abort if the load is too great.
yeah, i have no idea why you would unlock that feather control during the acceleration phase. But I would rather have it a manual system than computer controlled.
@@miguelsalami I wrote it as a joke, A.I. is just software that runs on a computer - the original comment was suggesting that an onboard computer with simple software to detect the condition would fix it. 100% correct. Yet today A.I. is hyped to the point that one could assume it doesn't even run on a computer
The lock for the feather system should be designed in such a way so that a pilot cannot carry out a catastrophic maneuver even if he tries to and there should be no override for the forbidden maneuver. It is deplorable that the designer of the spacecraft failed to design the lock for the feather system with possible pilot errors in mind. Since the spacecraft would experience catastrophic failure during its ascent to space unless the feather system is deployed between Mach 1.4 and 1.8, then the lock for the feather system should be designed in such a way that it is impossible to be unlocked when the speed is less than Mach 1.4 unless the speed is zero, i.e. stationary on the ground. Preferably, the safe range for unlocking the feather system manually should be set between Mach 1.4 and 1.7. The locking system should be designed in such a way that if the feather system is not manually unlocked between Mach 1.4 and 1.7. then it will be unlocked automatically at Mach 1.7. , just in case both pilots failed to open the lock manually within the safe range between Mach 1.4 and 1.7. The safe range between Mach 1.7 and 1.8 is used as a buffer zone to ensure the safe operation of the spacecraft after the feather system is unlocked automatically at Mach 1.7 and to allow time for the feather system to be unlocked manually if the automatic system fails to work. Recorded voice reminder should be given to the pilots shortly before the spacecraft reaches Mach 1.4 that the feather system needs to be deployed between Mach 1.4 and 1.7. The automatic-unlock of the feather system is allowed to be used in case of emergency and approved testing only. Pilots should be strictly forbidden to fail to use the manual-unlock intentionally so as to use the automatic-unlock of the feather system. I think my system with both pilots and computer control is safer than the pure computer control system because two independent systems for safety is better than one system for safety only.
It’s heavily implied that that’s what the crew of the challenger experienced after it exploded. Many people have found that it is entirely likely that the cockpit section of the shuttle survived the initial explosion. And that it was entirely possible that the crew could’ve been conscious the entire time. However, what is more likely that have happened both in the challenger event and this one is the unfortunate crew and likely lost consciousness long before he hit the ground. At such an altitude with such a little oxygen, even though he had a oxygen supply system it’s more than likely that said system failed and within probably about 20 seconds give or take, he lost consciousness due to hypoxia. so hopefully keyword hopefully he was out cold when that happened. Which will not instantaneous at the very least he hopefully didn’t see it coming.
I had a massive panic attack watching the Pan Am Lockerbie episode. Like a legitimate panic attack when watching the explosion and crash for exactly that reason. It must have been absolutely horrifying in real life if it elicited that kind of response from my body just watching a rendering of the explosion/crash
Unfortunately, I don't have to imagine it. Once I lost the engine in an L19 at 50' above ground, and already below best glide speed (barely above stall). I pitched down to maintain airspeed but didn't have enough airspeed for the elevator to be effective, so I couldn't flair and nosedived into the ground. That was most helpless 3 seconds of my life, not knowing if I was gonna survive or not.
@@Kenneth-tz4sx Believe it or not, all notes are flat/sharp, because all music has been performed on defective (mathematically) instruments. You've just never heard pure music ever in your life. This is why we dont let pianists fly them thar fancy aeroplanes. Just ask Pythagoras. 😂
The bit about the F14 manual being a record of death really caught my attention because it's the same thing for air traffic controllers and our rulebook the 7110.65. It started out in the late 50's or early 60's as basically a pamphlet. Today it is over 700 pages thick and almost every single instruction or rule was due to an aircraft accident or dangerous event. I used to call it The Book of Death. I still remember some of the rule changes after major events.
It is common to hear military pilots and even commercial sector professions state the fact that most rules and procedures are written in blood. So study and memorize them. The problem is humans are born knowing nothing at all. And each of us has to learn everything we will eventually need to know for every circumstance. It'a better to learn it academically than by experience. Especially when experience costs lives in very dangerous endeavors such as air and space travel.
I was an electrician on the stratolauncher, fairly similar conceptual design but MUCH LARGER. That puppy had a wingspan of 315' and the two outside wings each had (3) 747 engines. I don't remember the exact length of the two outer fuselages but the whole thing was composite and you couldn't drill into the structure to run the wire harnesses and install structural harness clamps so they incorporated a 2 part bonding agent that had to be pasted on the backs of the plastic harness clamps and you only had a couple minutes once the agent mixed inside the application tube to apply it and place the clamps onto the composite skin and it cured in only a few minutes. That was the one thing as an electrician that made me apprehensive. I was used to structural clamps I installed while working at Boeing. But I guess it flew OK a couple years later. I had already moved on and I did see a launch video. But I don't know if it ever served its original design intent which was to carry and launch massive payloads jettisoned at altitude from the center fuselage. 🤔
After Paul Allen died, Stratolaunch pivoted from commercial orbital launch to hypersonic flight test. They have that market almost to themselves, and they have a commanding lead: none of their competitors have flying hardware yet, let alone hypersonic test articles.
@@rickyism1576 "me either"(NGL)? Study "every single" air transport system. Every Single one was a "cover story" for a weapons system. Gramma flew the first's Concord(bomber) to the UK and the 747(missile chucker or bombs) to China. all of Hitlers, Ours, Theirs, Allies, or Enemies. 100% history.
What the video never mentions is -why- the feather had to be unlocked by Mach 1.8. It was because if they couldn’t feather, they would reenter nose first. If they were to reenter nose first above Mach 1.8, the aircraft would be severely damaged, and would never fly again. So the procedure was: at Mach 1.4, attempt unlock. If unlock OK, proceed with the test card. If no unlock, turn off the engine before Mach 1.8. Provenance: personal conversation with Brian Binnie, former SpaceShipTwo test pilot, the afternoon of the accident.
High speeds, high stress, a weakness in the safety system, bound to be an accident sometime. Obviously, the co pilot had done the input correctly on previous flights. Sad that new aircraft require men losing their lives in order to see the weakness. My condolences to his family.
This is not the U.S. of the 1950's. I am seventy eight years old and people today are not of the caliber of people of that era. I keep abreast of everything going on in this world and often think "what planet am I on"? Yes, it is that different.........
They had a lot of accidents and incidents with those as well. The entire intro to the 6 Million Dollar Man is actual footage of an experimental lifting body aircraft crashing. Chuck Yeager had a really bad crash in the NF -104 . Another time he almost lost the X-15, and so did Neil Armstrong. They were blowing up rockets every other week, too. Stop looking at the past with rose-colored glasses.
@@2vintage68it's not that, it's the replacement of building materials that have changed and new ways to build things differently to cut corners and production time.
Unbelievable. That, in this day and age, anyone would assume that a human wouldn’t make any errors! We make mistakes far more often than not! It reminds me of the poor challenger astronauts. Experts agree that they didn’t die until they hit the water. Couldn’t they have come up with some type of ejection for the capsule itself?
You would've needed to have made the entire crew cabin into an ejectable module. If I remember correctly, the crew rode on two different decks, one above the other.
This accident happened in 2014. Very tragic. They learned from the mistakes that were made. Ive seen 6 successful Virgin Galactic launches from Spaceport America. Looking forward to the Delta rocket next year.
I’m glad they said, “The best, of the best, of the best.” It’s really folks that understand what a plane is supposed to do. There’s a little bit of crazy involved. Sad case but it is experimental. We only become more educated because of these accidents.
@@matthewcox7985 - it’s still experimental and 9 months of preparation. I get it and I’ve had to punch 1 time in my career. Unfortunately, things just don’t go as planned.
I recall first seeing the demo video of how the tail boom rotates during the weightless portion of the flight at peak altitude. I was horrified that any designer thought having a moving section of the ship would be anything other than a disaster waiting to happen. Clearly if it got stuck in the 90 degree angle, the ship would never be able to return to earth in one piece. Can someone please tell us why this moving boom tail feature was needed?! What was it for? Was it only to adjust the cabin angle for a better view? Surely some bow thrusters would accomplish the same effect. This seems like one of those stories where no one in power had the guts to just say, "no, this is a bad idea. find another way."
The feathering maneuver is absolutely essential to a safe reentry. Remember all the energy used to go up (speed) is traded for the extreme altitude. As the vehicle falls back, it picks up all that speed again as it comes back down due to gravity (falling) and because of the super-thin air (90% of Earth's atmosphere is below 20 miles and a good deal of the last 10% is in just the few miles above that, above 40 miles you're in near vacuum and basically in vacuum above 62.5 miles (100 km or the "Karman line" that defines the edge of space, though there is still an extremely tenuous presence of a few air molecules, enough to slow down spacecraft and cause them to reenter, even the ISS and Hubble have to be reboosted from time to time to a higher altitude because of the cumulative effect of drag caused by hitting the sparse air molecules even at 200-300 km altitudes very slowly causes the orbit to decay.) SO, after the rocket engine is shut off, the vehicle is basically "falling upward" in a gravity field, meaning zero gravity, and that extends til the vehicle reaches the top of its trajectory, and begins to fall back towards Earth, and continues in weightlessness until the vehicle starts to hit the lower atmosphere. The problem is, if the vehicle "streamlines in" with NO feathering, it will hit the lower atmosphere at a VERY high speed and thus the 'reentry' into the lower atmosphere will generate extreme heat-- meaning they'd need a heavy heat shield in order for the vehicle to reenter without melting and breaking up, plus the g-loads would be very high due to the rapid deceleration (and extremely fast and high heat generation from friction with the thicker atmosphere. SO the idea is at the apex of the flight, to feather the tail booms and their control surfaces, so that they will naturally orient the belly of the vehicle to the oncoming air as it falls. This occurs MUCH earlier in the flight as it falls back, when the air is still very thin, but has thickened up just enough to push on the tail surfaces and rotate the vehicle belly down with the tail surfaces above it. This greatly expands the area exposed to the onrushing but yet very thin air, making for a much larger amount of air drag, which begins slowing the vehicle down much sooner, and so the vehicle enters the dense lower atmosphere at a much lower rate of speed, since it has already lost a lot of speed in the thinner but slowly thickening outer atmosphere. This lowers the heat pulse of reentry to manageable levels, so that they don't need a heat shield, and lowers the forces of deceleration on the vehicle so it can be structurally lighter. It's the same reason that the space shuttle reentered at a high angle of attack nose up, to maximize the air drag surface area of the belly of the vehicle early on in the reentry phase to slow down over a longer period of time, and thus minimize peak heating (though it's reentry from Mach 25 is FAR more energetic than anything the SpaceShip1/2 vehicles faced). Once the vehicle has reentered the lower atmosphere and slowed down sufficiently, the feathered tail sections are retracted to flight position and locked in place, which then allows the vehicle to convert back to gliding flight to glide back down unpowered to a runway landing. If it didn't retract the feathered tail surfaces to flight position, the thing wouldn't glide at all, and pancake into the desert at terminal velocity (probably around 200 mph). So basically no, the ONLY way that the vehicle could work with the existing materials and design/engine parameters and achieve the desired flight profile (mission) is to use the innovative feather maneuver... Of course if you built the thing out of titanium and using "hot structures" type construction techniques like some proposed spaceplanes or like the SR-71, something which could survive nearly 1000 degrees of surface heating, rather than about 400 degrees or so experienced by the composite materials of SS2, then you could do something other than the feather technique... but then you'd need a much different and heavier structure, larger engines, etc. and that would mean an entirely different design, and probably blow the economics of such a 'commercial space vehicle" completely out of the water due to costs...
That's the trillion dollar prize if you can get it right. But trillion dollars might even be pennies to the actual windfall of getting space travel viable for commercial.
@@Primitarian But also not really. They were not getting warnings from ALL OVER the industry like DUNCE-ston Mush was getting and taking said legitimate warnings as personal insults.
@@GeneralKenobiSIYE Fair enough, there is that difference, and so this disaster was not as outrageous as with the Titan submersible; however, it was still outrageous.
“They don’t have time to read the checklist” this is an indication that something is going to go wrong right there. There is a reason the checklist is written down. It is because humans can’t remember complex lists in their head without omitting various items on the list. If it’s happening too fast for the list either add crew or allow more time. Seriously, I am speaking as an accomplished pilot.
Pilot unions. Fear that any little thing could then be used to can them, not just used for when things go really wrong. Same reason they keep fighting having longer CVR retention.
It’s my opinion as a long time pilot and engineer that the copilot made a mistake, but not for the reasons stated. The video stated that on a previous simulator flight, he failed to unlock until they hit Mach 1.8 at which time they were too fast for the empennage (tail assembly) to move to the vertical position. He was clearly annoyed that he didn’t unlock between 1.4 and 1.8 and so on the real flight, I believe he mistakenly unlocked at Mach 0.8 because he was fixated on that .8…. I agree that the other factors also played a huge role but this guy was afraid of potentially failing again and thus acted too soon, which cost him his life. My condolences to all involved!
Fellow pilot here, I was going to comment the same thing when I heard the max limit was 1.8 and he oversped the feather once before. He either looked down and fixated on the .8 and didn't see the 1, or heard "point eight" called out and thought that meant 1.8M. Very easy mistake to make under high stress. Also, "hadn't been in a powered flight in 18mo". WTF.
Before this video I had no idea that the forces swtched from top of the tail to the bottom of the tail then back to top. My understanding is back with the DVD "Black Sky". I believe that Mike Melville didn't start the feather until Space Ship 1 reached apogee, before descending. In this documentary I was surprised when they were talking about unlocking the feather during the most stressful part of the ascent. Again I thought the safest point in the flight to unlock would be at apogee when aerodynamic forces are the least and near to descent.
I know its a TV show, and you have to present known data in a certain way to tell a story, but even so, one would think the NTSB would first look at the in-flight warnings that happened just before the crash before they started putting the engine back together.
From a software standpoint, the display could have easily given a hint as to when it was safe or unsafe to unlock the mechanism based on the vehicle's speed which was also on the display.
This is after the fact Monday morning quarterbacking. If there's a maneuver that causes the aircraft to break apart there would have been an interlock (that's what controls people call it) to prevent the event. There is also failure modes that if the sensor or system components fails other interlocks kick in, loss of signal failure logic.
Here again, a seasoned test pilot would have expected the vibration and G-load at ignition. That's why they fly these kind of missions. They like that stuff.
Exactly what I was thinking! You’d think with HUGE of a story Ocean Gate was, that this would have been similar..🤷♂️ but I didn’t see a single story or headline about it on the news or social media! 🤯 🤔 It’s obvious there was an concerted effort to keep this story as quiet as possible to avoid public backlash & more importantly, minimize the guaranteed devaluation of the companies value & stock price. and while I know it was definitely reported, I’m sure billionaire Branson as well as many other powerful, influential investors including the US government do everything within there power to make sure this story didn’t go ‘Viral’ as a story of this magnitude would normally reach.
It''s not much different than shifting gears in a manual car at the precise moment, if I needed to shift gears at 7000rpm, I switch gears at 7000. There are things you need to do within a small window in aviation. If you've watched enough of these, you know that five seconds can be the difference between rectifying the ship or falling out of the sky.
This particular test card item was, simply, insane and unnecessary and completely counterintuitive to all common sense. Had it never been stupidly adopted, as happened all times before, no loss of any sort would have come.
I feel sorry the one pilot that didn't survive. Space exploration flight are difficult. In the end they were able to improve safety on the Virgin Galactic. It's now a success space flight.
With todays technology wouldn't such a high risk flight possibly had to option to be flown remotely until they got enough data to fly safely before risking lives?
Does anyone know how they do this mini doc as far as filming the interior of spaceship #2? Do they actually rebuild the interior of the craft. I'm sure Branson didn't authorize this right? The stock shots of the plane w space ship #2 I get. But the interior of #2 is perfect. The windows, dash and electronics. It's hard to believe the spent the money to recreate the interior with actor pilots. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Seems like serious money for a RUclips doc. Lmk. Thanks
A very cheaply made cockpit and green screens. My question is why do we foot the bill for investigation and get fake footage instead?? Guess you don't care where half your paycheck goes?
It’s an Air Force term if you see something unsafe happening. You say “knock it off” and the crew has to get to a safe aircraft configuration and figure out if there is an issue.
🎉I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but I was a mechanical design engineer (mechanical drafter) for Lockheed & briefly for McDonnell Douglas. Those tail sections looked flimsey to me. A spoiler or structural member tying those tail sections together would be a good starting point.
You can not have 2 tails at that velocity. Minute differences in vibration flexure between the two tails would cause an opposing harmonic oscillation resulting in vibration amplification. The excessive vibration could move the heavy lever by itself without piolet error. Also, the tails appear to be overextended which only makes the situation of vibration more likely. If I were them i would dump the exotic fancy design for something more stable. Looks very cool but It will only happen again.
There is when they identify it as a catastrophic failure potential. I think there's some after the fact "I knew that" going on here, or there may be some other condition that could possibly happen that requires the feather be deployed outside the normal mission parameters.
This is an amazing feat of engineering, but the question must be asked: is it practical? All this engineering and effort just to get a vehicle to the edge of space and then come back down to Earth in a very short period of time makes this a high priced amusement ride with no other practical value. If the craft could be scaled up to then be able to achieve Earth orbit it then could be used for things beyond just a high priced amusement ride.
@@robertgary3561 On the contrary, though the Wright Flyer was a very unstable powered aircraft, the Wright brothers used it as a testbed for their flying experiments to improve controlled flight. Matter of fact, after many years of testing, making changes and improvements, in 1909, the Wright Military Flyer was the world's first military aircraft purchased by the Army. Though the aircraft never saw combat, it was used to train pilots. The advancement of powered flight continued... So yes, the Wright Flyer did have purpose. I stand by my opinion with this craft and also with the Blue Origin, it's just a high priced joy ride... SpaceX has made advances in rocket flight by leaps and bounds and they continue to do so...
@@robertgary3561 Yes, I understand it's mark in history, it's purpose will be marked as a Commercial Suborbital Space Tourism venture designed to take passengers on suborbital flights, offering a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth's curvature. So, a high priced carnival ride. I understand that there have also been some research done during the 4 minutes of microgravity, but at what cost? The craft can carry six passengers and two pilots, each passenger seat cost $250,000, that x 6 = $1,500,000 just for passenger seating... total flight operations cost to launch is not publicly available, so it must be pretty hefty. I guess when you have billions of $$ you play in a big way... Oh to dream... :)
I don't think most people associate the term with Jim Jones and his cult. It is still used for several unrelated and generally positive meanings. Although the term "white" seems to have fallen out of favor.
I'm surprised that the engineers didn't stress the scenario of unlocking before 1.4 mach. A sensor and program adjustment preventing the unlock from happening is definitely necessary. Now in the sim it was flagged as an abort if not unlocked before reaching 1.8 mach. What are the dangers in that? And if they train for late unlocking, why not early unlocking?
At 0:44 - Not really. VG's business model had nothing to do with real space travel. Their whole goal is to sell rides for several hundred thousand dollars per seat to go up to about the Karman line and then right back down again. Just a quick recreational flight, coming right back down where they started. There's almost enough market there for one commercial outing every two or three years.
I find this ridiculous... The idea of taking civilian into space in a ship that folds in half at Mach speeds and if you get the timing wrong it explodes is nuts in my book.
@@fsoiberg You have no idea. Just because a giant conglomerate screwed up the brilliant and proven development of Burt Rutan does not make it a bad concept. Every airliner can be destroyed at will and within two seconds by the pilot with an improper control command. The X-15 and space shuttle have several catastrophes to their record simply by operating as intended. This aircraft was destroyed by the pilot who intentionally committed suicide by deploying the feathering device while in the atmosphere are high mach. This is evident by even a rudimentary inspection of the facts.
Branson should have stuck to simple delta wing lifting body design with a replaceable, ablative heat shield. The hinged feather system has too many possible points of failure.
Seems like a bad disaster but an easy fix. The unlock needs to happen within a certain speed window. Nothing told the pilot that opening before the window would be a problem. He didn't know and was getting ahead. I would imagine any pilot lacks experience with this machine. But if they want the pilot to wait till the right speed, they should put in a fail safe to the lockout. They can accurately measure speeds with instruments at the speed of light. What if the pilot is out? Automate this unlock process and build in an override for the pilot. Make the pilot work but automate the work to prevent the pilot from having to. Why do we use cruise control when we drive? And we trust it. It works better than we do at a fixed mundane chore, and frees us up for other tasks.
I feel like the NTSB forces themselves to give an answer to even things that can't be answered. They basically chalked the crash up to pilot jitters. I don't necissarily believe 1 failed attempt in the simulator from a test pilot to be an ultimate answer to what happened. But the NTSB couldn't come up with anything else, so they just slapped a label on it and called it a day.
Why was there a fail-safe in place (for late unlocking of the wings into the "feather" position) which triggered an "abort" warning but nothing for early unlocking? In either event, simply "unlocking" the wing feathering system is not supposed to equal deployment. However, a primary fail-safe warning addressing not only an early unlocking but also any malfunction in the system, in this case, an unexpected event caused by "severe turbulence that overpowered the tail booms' securing mechanism," allowing for partial deployment, may have prevented this catastrophe. So why a warning at one end and not the other? NTSB did acknowledge this in their Conclusions under "Findings" but not in the "Primary Cause" follow-up paragraph in their Conclusions. I think it was unfair for the media to cite "pilot error" by Co-Pilot Alsbury due to his premature unlocking of the "feather" as the primary "cause" of the crash; when aerodynamically (which is why planes crash) it was "a design flaw in the feather actuators to hold the assembly in the unfeathered position with the locks disengaged." That tells me the faulty locking mechanism and lack of a fail-safe should have been cited as the main causal factors and not the actions of Alsbury. R.I.P. Mike Alsbury.
Novel incoming, sorry. This video is pretty detailed and mostly accurate, at least according to the NTSB report. Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic did note that they didn't consider the possibility of a pilot releasing the feather lock early and as a result did not design any feather unlock prevention mechanism on the levers, which is an oversight. One thing that is inaccurate is the error in the sim on late unlocking was not after the 1.8M point requiring an abort, it was after the 1.5M point which came with a caution so the pilots had sufficient advance notice to unlock the feathering prior to the 1.8M propulsion abort. Again, there was no similar caution or indication for when to begin unlock, it is possible (speculation) that the pilots and design team agreed this would be unnecessary clutter of the displays because everyone understood the requirement to wait to unlock the feathering until the appropriate speed was reached. The pilots interviewed for the report indicated that they knew the requirement to wait to 1.4M to unlock the feathering, the surviving accident pilot stated the topic came up many times and it was common knowledge. The WK2 pilot for this flight, who was the SS2 pilot on the previous powered flight, stated he knew the reason was due to the forces holding the feathering closed past 1.4M so aerodynamics wasn't driving it to open, it would have to be commanded by the actuators. Notably, the NTSB report indicated the prior two powered flights of SS2 had feather unlock speeds of 1.2M and 1.3M due to differences in rocket burn times, so the unlock speed was trending up, not down, and the window for unlocking the feathering shrunk, but according to the report there was 2.7 seconds from 1.4M to 1.5M in post-accident sim runs so the pilot would have 8-10 seconds to acknowledge the 1.4M and react, and still 5-6 seconds upon the 1.5M caution annunciation. Some relevant projected timing for the flight: 1. Release + 1-2 sec: rocket ignition 2. Ignition + 7 sec: 0.8M callout by copilot, for pilot to start stab trim 3. 0.8M + 0-2 sec: stab trim readout by copilot as it approaches the -14 deg point 4. Trim readout + 12-14 sec: 1.4M and copilot unlocks feather levers. 5. 1.4M + 2.7 sec: 1.5M and if feather unlock not done, aural and visual annunciation to unlock feathering to prevent mission abort at 1.8M. There was no interlock to prevent a single pilot action from causing an inflight catastrophic loss of the spacecraft which is contrary to best practices. That said, there's no interlock on an ejection handle in a fighter aircraft which, if solo, almost certainly leads to loss of the aircraft. There have been more than one inadvertent ejection after landing because a pilot pulled the ejection lever that was in a similar position as a seat lock handle in another fighter. So the aviation community doesn't foolproof everything, and it's possible that the reliability of a mechanical or electronic interlock was had a failure rate that was deemed to be similar to a pilot not following the checklist on a well-rehearsed and briefed mission. There did seem to be adequate communication of the Mach requirement for feathering and possibly the consequence since at least one pilot could say why, though it was not formally documented with a warning in the manual or test card.
Rogers county is home of the test pilot, thanks to Edwards Air Force Base. Every father, mother, and child knows what it means to have a test pilot in the family. You can go back when Edwards Air Force Base was known as Muroc Air Base. How many pilots have been lost to the adventure of the future of flight, plenty. That's why today, there are not as many test pilot's. Computers and AI can do a less risky approach to the comprehension of the aircraft.
ANY mention of potential catastrophic failure should be foremost in a pilot's mind, even if was mentioned 4 years previously. That's basic self preservation. Kinda like making sure that the gear are down before landing. Simulations should have been far more numerous.
Right there what that guy said. We had to rush it along before we started losing money. Thats what went wrong.
Does that reminds you of Boeing?
@@lcfflc3887or the space shuttle
Haste makes waste
ppp⁵óóp⁵
They were hardly rushing. They were 7 yrs behind schedule.
It’s amazing that one guy lived!!
I agree it’s amazing how he survived!
It's too bad the super rich get tax abatements and aren't taxed to 90% any more.
@@LiamCobb-yn1iu I CunCur
Especially at that velocity and altitude, either of which should be lethal.
"8 more lives left... " -😺
Geez. Seeing Branson's comment that ..."we will rebuild it to make the next spaceship 100% safe..." makes me think that he doesn't understand the whole concept of flying at almost 2 times the speed of sound. Those two ideas aren't really compatible. You can do a lot to minimize risk...but to eliminate it down to zero? That is nonsense.
STICK TO ROCK BANDS
Yes... true. never "zero risk".
I used to work for a company with charismatic CEO.
Sometimes they let their egos & imagination get ahead of what really is possible.
Glad I was fired early.
You really can't expect him to say anything less than 100%. Can you imagine what the public comments would've been if he had said to make it 99% safe? The man understands flying better than most people. He also understands the nuances of public speech, especially one that plays on TV. One other thing, you always have to aim for that 100% even if it is not possible. It is the higher than actual expectations that helps get you to the actual and maybe a little beyond it.
He’s a publicity hound.
I've known about this one for a while, and it always floors me how the entire project--from the design of the craft, the procedures for flying it, the training protocols, the lack of failsafes--was just the Devil Murphy's Playground from start to finish. Everything that _could_ be done wrong _was_ done wrong, and what's really amazing is that no one caught it and this didn't happen earlier in the project than it did!
Remember they had another fatal accident a few years back when a tank of nitrous oxide exploded during a cold flow test. These people are simply not ready for prime time.
How did they recreate this mini doc? The spacecraft #2 looks real. Did Branson authorize? I do see his engineering staff commenting.
You can’t de-risk everything, and shouldn’t try. Progress takes a certain amount of risk, and is usually made by the risk-takers - not the armchair quarterbacks or those demanding absolute safety in every venture.
Kinda sounds like the Titan Submersible
Why is RUclips deleting my comments pointing out the similarities of your comment to that submersible that imploded?
The pitch up force was to great for the fuselage to handle. The onboard computer should have had a software program to unlock the feather system at the precise time & speed or abort if the load is too great.
yeah, i have no idea why you would unlock that feather control during the acceleration phase. But I would rather have it a manual system than computer controlled.
Onboard Computer? Dumbest thing I ever heard. A.I. pilot would have succeeded.
@@LordOfTheThreeWorlds Please explain the difference & why you think Dumb AI is smarter by Any Computer system (including Atari)
@@miguelsalami I wrote it as a joke, A.I. is just software that runs on a computer - the original comment was suggesting that an onboard computer with simple software to detect the condition would fix it. 100% correct. Yet today A.I. is hyped to the point that one could assume it doesn't even run on a computer
The lock for the feather system should be designed in such a way so that a pilot cannot carry out a catastrophic maneuver even if he tries to and there should be no override for the forbidden maneuver. It is deplorable that the designer of the spacecraft failed to design the lock for the feather system with possible pilot errors in mind.
Since the spacecraft would experience catastrophic failure during its ascent to space unless the feather system is deployed between Mach 1.4 and 1.8, then the lock for the feather system should be designed in such a way that it is impossible to be unlocked when the speed is less than Mach 1.4 unless the speed is zero, i.e. stationary on the ground.
Preferably, the safe range for unlocking the feather system manually should be set between Mach 1.4 and 1.7. The locking system should be designed in such a way that if the feather system is not manually unlocked between Mach 1.4 and 1.7. then it will be unlocked automatically at Mach 1.7. , just in case both pilots failed to open the lock manually within the safe range between Mach 1.4 and 1.7.
The safe range between Mach 1.7 and 1.8 is used as a buffer zone to ensure the safe operation of the spacecraft after the feather system is unlocked automatically at Mach 1.7 and to allow time for the feather system to be unlocked manually if the automatic system fails to work.
Recorded voice reminder should be given to the pilots shortly before the spacecraft reaches Mach 1.4 that the feather system needs to be deployed between Mach 1.4 and 1.7.
The automatic-unlock of the feather system is allowed to be used in case of emergency and approved testing only. Pilots should be strictly forbidden to fail to use the manual-unlock intentionally so as to use the automatic-unlock of the feather system.
I think my system with both pilots and computer control is safer than the pure computer control system because two independent systems for safety is better than one system for safety only.
Even having the display appear in a RED or ORANGE color until it is fafe to deather seems like a degree of added safety.
Safe to feather, perhaps
"Fafe to deather"? Do you sound like Bobby Boucher when you talk out loud as well?
This seems like a great idea. Would it be so hard to engineer?
Imagine being trapped in the cockpit as it falls towards earth, knowing there is nothing you can do. I would rather have an instant death than that.
Same here.
It’s heavily implied that that’s what the crew of the challenger experienced after it exploded. Many people have found that it is entirely likely that the cockpit section of the shuttle survived the initial explosion. And that it was entirely possible that the crew could’ve been conscious the entire time.
However, what is more likely that have happened both in the challenger event and this one is the unfortunate crew and likely lost consciousness long before he hit the ground. At such an altitude with such a little oxygen, even though he had a oxygen supply system it’s more than likely that said system failed and within probably about 20 seconds give or take, he lost consciousness due to hypoxia. so hopefully keyword hopefully he was out cold when that happened. Which will not instantaneous at the very least he hopefully didn’t see it coming.
I had a massive panic attack watching the Pan Am Lockerbie episode. Like a legitimate panic attack when watching the explosion and crash for exactly that reason. It must have been absolutely horrifying in real life if it elicited that kind of response from my body just watching a rendering of the explosion/crash
If he took off the oxygen mask or it got blown off. he would have died immediately at that altitude
Unfortunately, I don't have to imagine it. Once I lost the engine in an L19 at 50' above ground, and already below best glide speed (barely above stall). I pitched down to maintain airspeed but didn't have enough airspeed for the elevator to be effective, so I couldn't flair and nosedived into the ground. That was most helpless 3 seconds of my life, not knowing if I was gonna survive or not.
I play the piano for a living. And when I have to perform I don't practice until I get it right I practice until I can't get it wrong.
After all.. you only get one chance at it.
This is why I couldn’t play the piano, I would always find a new way to get it wrong.
I like your allegory! 😊
Fortunately, you won't crash and burn if you hit a flat note.
@@Kenneth-tz4sx Believe it or not, all notes are flat/sharp, because all music has been performed on defective (mathematically) instruments. You've just never heard pure music ever in your life. This is why we dont let pianists fly them thar fancy aeroplanes. Just ask Pythagoras. 😂
Why does Richard Branson look like the archetypal medieval king lol
Maybe because he wants to look this way? 😅
Well finish the joke I am in suspense ! !
His name is Richard and wants to be a king like Richard the Lionheart.
I'm from Mojave. At the beginning of this video. The Spaceport America building is in New Mexico not Mojave, California.
THAT'S RIGHT!!! And there were WEEDS growing out of the runway YEARS AGO!
Woohoo! 2 new episodes in the last 7 days! Thank you Mayday!!
Right and new episodes that I haven’t seen! 😍😍😍❤
This isn’t a new episode, unfortunately
As the narrator says, ahead of SHED-ALE
Tesla fan boys are not welcomed, leave.
Wow! This guy celebrates the death of one of the worlds best pilots just cause he likes a weird car companys logo
The bit about the F14 manual being a record of death really caught my attention because it's the same thing for air traffic controllers and our rulebook the 7110.65. It started out in the late 50's or early 60's as basically a pamphlet. Today it is over 700 pages thick and almost every single instruction or rule was due to an aircraft accident or dangerous event. I used to call it The Book of Death. I still remember some of the rule changes after major events.
It is common to hear military pilots and even commercial sector professions state the fact that most rules and procedures are written in blood. So study and memorize them.
The problem is humans are born knowing nothing at all. And each of us has to learn everything we will eventually need to know for every circumstance. It'a better to learn it academically than by experience. Especially when experience costs lives in very dangerous endeavors such as air and space travel.
I was an electrician on the stratolauncher, fairly similar conceptual design but MUCH LARGER. That puppy had a wingspan of 315' and the two outside wings each had (3) 747 engines. I don't remember the exact length of the two outer fuselages but the whole thing was composite and you couldn't drill into the structure to run the wire harnesses and install structural harness clamps so they incorporated a 2 part bonding agent that had to be pasted on the backs of the plastic harness clamps and you only had a couple minutes once the agent mixed inside the application tube to apply it and place the clamps onto the composite skin and it cured in only a few minutes. That was the one thing as an electrician that made me apprehensive. I was used to structural clamps I installed while working at Boeing. But I guess it flew OK a couple years later. I had already moved on and I did see a launch video. But I don't know if it ever served its original design intent which was to carry and launch massive payloads jettisoned at altitude from the center fuselage. 🤔
Are you still in aviation ?
I watched the 1st flight. No payload. That thing is a beast!
I'm a mechanical type but I'm familiar with the Lockheed wire harnesses, I'd expect them to be pretty similar. I agree with all that.
After Paul Allen died, Stratolaunch pivoted from commercial orbital launch to hypersonic flight test. They have that market almost to themselves, and they have a commanding lead: none of their competitors have flying hardware yet, let alone hypersonic test articles.
Billionaires using Millionaires as test dummies is hilarious. There's a reason Elon wont hop on a Spacex rocket.
Never about passangers? About! chucking bosted "PAY" Loads' at the edges of space, again and Again..
@@davefellhoelter1343 NGL i didn't understand a word of that.
@@rickyism1576 very sorry. "NGL"?
@@davefellhoelter1343 not gonna lie.
@@rickyism1576 "me either"(NGL)? Study "every single" air transport system. Every Single one was a "cover story" for a weapons system.
Gramma flew the first's Concord(bomber) to the UK and the 747(missile chucker or bombs) to China.
all of Hitlers, Ours, Theirs, Allies, or Enemies. 100% history.
What the video never mentions is -why- the feather had to be unlocked by Mach 1.8. It was because if they couldn’t feather, they would reenter nose first. If they were to reenter nose first above Mach 1.8, the aircraft would be severely damaged, and would never fly again. So the procedure was: at Mach 1.4, attempt unlock. If unlock OK, proceed with the test card. If no unlock, turn off the engine before Mach 1.8.
Provenance: personal conversation with Brian Binnie, former SpaceShipTwo test pilot, the afternoon of the accident.
High speeds, high stress, a weakness in the safety system, bound to be an accident sometime. Obviously, the co pilot had done the input correctly on previous flights. Sad that new aircraft require men losing their lives in order to see the weakness. My condolences to his family.
Sad they kept trying their best to pin it on the dead guy.
Test pilots know it's high risk. Sympathy to the pilots family.
Sorry about Alsbury.... Sad he gave his life for what amounts to a high tech amusment park ride.
You have a small mind.
@@REDMAN298not really.
@@shelbywilson114 yes really.
amusement park ride? This is the advent and baby steps of mankind becoming a space faring civilization how narrow minded are you?
@@shelbywilson114really really
After ocean gate I have little trust of they having a safety first mindset existing above the money mindset
This was long before ocean gate.
@@cargopilot747 I know that but I thought they still working on it
Also this never had paid customers, this is nothing like oceangate, it's more akin to the development of the first commercial airplane, but for space.
Same with Boeing.
@@cargopilot747not really. You must be 12 years old.
Never knew this was an episode, very informative
The USAF and NASA were successfully making these type of flights with the X-15 program back in the late 50s, and through the 60s.
This is not the U.S. of the 1950's. I am seventy eight years old and people today are not of the caliber of people of that era. I keep abreast of everything going on in this world and often think "what planet am I on"? Yes, it is that different.........
They had a lot of accidents and incidents with those as well. The entire intro to the 6 Million Dollar Man is actual footage of an experimental lifting body aircraft crashing. Chuck Yeager had a really bad crash in the NF -104 . Another time he almost lost the X-15, and so did Neil Armstrong. They were blowing up rockets every other week, too. Stop looking at the past with rose-colored glasses.
@@2vintage68 The America we knew and loved
@@2vintage68it's not that, it's the replacement of building materials that have changed and new ways to build things differently to cut corners and production time.
@@2vintage68yes sir, it is that bad. In my little 30 years, night and day difference in intelligence, and everything that goes along with it.
No vehicle traveling at those speeds will ever be 100% safe.
Unbelievable. That, in this day and age, anyone would assume that a human wouldn’t make any errors! We make mistakes far more often than not! It reminds me of the poor challenger astronauts. Experts agree that they didn’t die until they hit the water. Couldn’t they have come up with some type of ejection for the capsule itself?
You would've needed to have made the entire crew cabin into an ejectable module. If I remember correctly, the crew rode on two different decks, one above the other.
You should see those engineers on the softball team. They all bat 1.000! Absolute perfection every single time!
@@Revikra 😂😂😂
Humans are expendable in the name of "progress."
This accident happened in 2014. Very tragic. They learned from the mistakes that were made. Ive seen 6 successful Virgin Galactic launches from Spaceport America. Looking forward to the Delta rocket next year.
I’m glad they said, “The best, of the best, of the best.” It’s really folks that understand what a plane is supposed to do. There’s a little bit of crazy involved. Sad case but it is experimental. We only become more educated because of these accidents.
Safety procedures and regulations were written in blood.
@@matthewcox7985 - it’s still experimental and 9 months of preparation. I get it and I’ve had to punch 1 time in my career. Unfortunately, things just don’t go as planned.
I recall first seeing the demo video of how the tail boom rotates during the weightless portion of the flight at peak altitude. I was horrified that any designer thought having a moving section of the ship would be anything other than a disaster waiting to happen. Clearly if it got stuck in the 90 degree angle, the ship would never be able to return to earth in one piece.
Can someone please tell us why this moving boom tail feature was needed?! What was it for? Was it only to adjust the cabin angle for a better view? Surely some bow thrusters would accomplish the same effect.
This seems like one of those stories where no one in power had the guts to just say, "no, this is a bad idea. find another way."
The feathering maneuver is absolutely essential to a safe reentry. Remember all the energy used to go up (speed) is traded for the extreme altitude. As the vehicle falls back, it picks up all that speed again as it comes back down due to gravity (falling) and because of the super-thin air (90% of Earth's atmosphere is below 20 miles and a good deal of the last 10% is in just the few miles above that, above 40 miles you're in near vacuum and basically in vacuum above 62.5 miles (100 km or the "Karman line" that defines the edge of space, though there is still an extremely tenuous presence of a few air molecules, enough to slow down spacecraft and cause them to reenter, even the ISS and Hubble have to be reboosted from time to time to a higher altitude because of the cumulative effect of drag caused by hitting the sparse air molecules even at 200-300 km altitudes very slowly causes the orbit to decay.)
SO, after the rocket engine is shut off, the vehicle is basically "falling upward" in a gravity field, meaning zero gravity, and that extends til the vehicle reaches the top of its trajectory, and begins to fall back towards Earth, and continues in weightlessness until the vehicle starts to hit the lower atmosphere. The problem is, if the vehicle "streamlines in" with NO feathering, it will hit the lower atmosphere at a VERY high speed and thus the 'reentry' into the lower atmosphere will generate extreme heat-- meaning they'd need a heavy heat shield in order for the vehicle to reenter without melting and breaking up, plus the g-loads would be very high due to the rapid deceleration (and extremely fast and high heat generation from friction with the thicker atmosphere. SO the idea is at the apex of the flight, to feather the tail booms and their control surfaces, so that they will naturally orient the belly of the vehicle to the oncoming air as it falls. This occurs MUCH earlier in the flight as it falls back, when the air is still very thin, but has thickened up just enough to push on the tail surfaces and rotate the vehicle belly down with the tail surfaces above it. This greatly expands the area exposed to the onrushing but yet very thin air, making for a much larger amount of air drag, which begins slowing the vehicle down much sooner, and so the vehicle enters the dense lower atmosphere at a much lower rate of speed, since it has already lost a lot of speed in the thinner but slowly thickening outer atmosphere. This lowers the heat pulse of reentry to manageable levels, so that they don't need a heat shield, and lowers the forces of deceleration on the vehicle so it can be structurally lighter. It's the same reason that the space shuttle reentered at a high angle of attack nose up, to maximize the air drag surface area of the belly of the vehicle early on in the reentry phase to slow down over a longer period of time, and thus minimize peak heating (though it's reentry from Mach 25 is FAR more energetic than anything the SpaceShip1/2 vehicles faced). Once the vehicle has reentered the lower atmosphere and slowed down sufficiently, the feathered tail sections are retracted to flight position and locked in place, which then allows the vehicle to convert back to gliding flight to glide back down unpowered to a runway landing. If it didn't retract the feathered tail surfaces to flight position, the thing wouldn't glide at all, and pancake into the desert at terminal velocity (probably around 200 mph).
So basically no, the ONLY way that the vehicle could work with the existing materials and design/engine parameters and achieve the desired flight profile (mission) is to use the innovative feather maneuver... Of course if you built the thing out of titanium and using "hot structures" type construction techniques like some proposed spaceplanes or like the SR-71, something which could survive nearly 1000 degrees of surface heating, rather than about 400 degrees or so experienced by the composite materials of SS2, then you could do something other than the feather technique... but then you'd need a much different and heavier structure, larger engines, etc. and that would mean an entirely different design, and probably blow the economics of such a 'commercial space vehicle" completely out of the water due to costs...
@@lukestrawwalker figures that was the part of the vid i skipped over (19:05 min). thanks,
Getting to space is important.
Coming back safely in one piece even more so.
That's the trillion dollar prize if you can get it right. But trillion dollars might even be pennies to the actual windfall of getting space travel viable for commercial.
If the plan is to come back. I would go on a one-way trip to the moon to build a base over the next few years. That's all I have left anyway.
Wtf do you need to find in space!?!?
Another great episode. The NTSB is the best at what they do. RIP Mike.
I flew my own airplanes for 10 years and never heard anybody say good about the ntsb.
It sort of reminds me of the Titan submersible
Yes on another failed experiment
Except it's not. This space project wasn't taking paid customers up there.
Yes, the same sort of we-need-to-be-brash-because-that's-what-heroes-do attitude.
@@Primitarian But also not really. They were not getting warnings from ALL OVER the industry like DUNCE-ston Mush was getting and taking said legitimate warnings as personal insults.
@@GeneralKenobiSIYE Fair enough, there is that difference, and so this disaster was not as outrageous as with the Titan submersible; however, it was still outrageous.
“They don’t have time to read the checklist” this is an indication that something is going to go wrong right there. There is a reason the checklist is written down. It is because humans can’t remember complex lists in their head without omitting various items on the list. If it’s happening too fast for the list either add crew or allow more time. Seriously, I am speaking as an accomplished pilot.
Any level of comfort is a recipe for disaster in any flight situation!
Why aren't there cameras in cockpits on commercial flights?
Pilot unions. Fear that any little thing could then be used to can them, not just used for when things go really wrong. Same reason they keep fighting having longer CVR retention.
Let me put a little camera over your shoulder at work all day, and watch ur every moment. I'm sure you'll love it.
They wouldn't be able to drink duty free.
And he files for bankruptcy after this.
26:08 first mention of unlocking feather system too early
It’s my opinion as a long time pilot and engineer that the copilot made a mistake, but not for the reasons stated. The video stated that on a previous simulator flight, he failed to unlock until they hit Mach 1.8 at which time they were too fast for the empennage (tail assembly) to move to the vertical position. He was clearly annoyed that he didn’t unlock between 1.4 and 1.8 and so on the real flight, I believe he mistakenly unlocked at Mach 0.8 because he was fixated on that .8…. I agree that the other factors also played a huge role but this guy was afraid of potentially failing again and thus acted too soon, which cost him his life. My condolences to all involved!
Fellow pilot here, I was going to comment the same thing when I heard the max limit was 1.8 and he oversped the feather once before. He either looked down and fixated on the .8 and didn't see the 1, or heard "point eight" called out and thought that meant 1.8M. Very easy mistake to make under high stress. Also, "hadn't been in a powered flight in 18mo". WTF.
Before this video I had no idea that the forces swtched from top of the tail to the bottom of the tail then back to top. My understanding is back with the DVD "Black Sky". I believe that Mike Melville didn't start the feather until Space Ship 1 reached apogee, before descending. In this documentary I was surprised when they were talking about unlocking the feather during the most stressful part of the ascent. Again I thought the safest point in the flight to unlock would be at apogee when aerodynamic forces are the least and near to descent.
NOT the end of commercial Space Travel , just one type of travel here ...😮
Yeah Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already carried people to the edge of space ! Including Captain Kirk !
No, Kirk flew as payload with Jeff Bezos, not Elon
Nice to see new stuff :)
I know its a TV show, and you have to present known data in a certain way to tell a story, but even so, one would think the NTSB would first look at the in-flight warnings that happened just before the crash before they started putting the engine back together.
Never thought I'd see a day were the words "Gone Wrong!" are in a Mayday title.
It's amazing how one man did it & didn't fail, while others tried to compete getting others killed in the process....
From a software standpoint, the display could have easily given a hint as to when it was safe or unsafe to unlock the mechanism based on the vehicle's speed which was also on the display.
This is after the fact Monday morning quarterbacking. If there's a maneuver that causes the aircraft to break apart there would have been an interlock (that's what controls people call it) to prevent the event. There is also failure modes that if the sensor or system components fails other interlocks kick in, loss of signal failure logic.
Here again, a seasoned test pilot would have expected the vibration and G-load at ignition. That's why they fly these kind of missions. They like that stuff.
There was no ejection system on this aircraft? And yet one of the pilots managed to escape and parachute down.
I would like to know more about that...
I don't remember hearing a word about this. I remember being so excited, way back when I first heard about this program.
I remember this. It happened in 2014
Exactly what I was thinking! You’d think with HUGE of a story Ocean Gate was, that this would have been similar..🤷♂️ but I didn’t see a single story or headline about it on the news or social media! 🤯 🤔
It’s obvious there was an concerted effort to keep this story as quiet as possible to avoid public backlash & more importantly, minimize the guaranteed devaluation of the companies value & stock price. and while I know it was definitely reported, I’m sure billionaire Branson as well as many other powerful, influential investors including the US government do everything within there power to make sure this story didn’t go ‘Viral’ as a story of this magnitude would normally reach.
19:10 "feather mode" defined here
Finally a new episode I haven't seen yet
🙌🏻
26:28 - What in the world?? That's way too dynamic to be left to human control. I wouldn't even feel comfortable leaving it to computer control.
It''s not much different than shifting gears in a manual car at the precise moment, if I needed to shift gears at 7000rpm, I switch gears at 7000. There are things you need to do within a small window in aviation. If you've watched enough of these, you know that five seconds can be the difference between rectifying the ship or falling out of the sky.
@@MMMmyshawarma
My car doesn't shatter into pieces and fling my body into the road if I don't change gears within a few seconds.
@@StuffWriter it's not about shattering into pieces, it's just performing a task within a window.
That is actually one badass design to be honest.
How many people have stories of their plane blowing apart at 50 thousand feet and living to tell about it? Absolutely crazy!
This particular test card item was, simply, insane and unnecessary and completely counterintuitive to all common sense. Had it never been stupidly adopted, as happened all times before, no loss of any sort would have come.
Flight Controller: “White Knight 2, OMAHA!!!” 😂
Excellent mayday episode. Very interesting.
I feel sorry the one pilot that didn't survive. Space exploration flight are difficult. In the end they were able to improve safety on the Virgin Galactic. It's now a success space flight.
With todays technology wouldn't such a high risk flight possibly had to option to be flown remotely until they got enough data to fly safely before risking lives?
$$$$$$$$$$
Qantas 72 arrives Wednesday!
Does anyone know how they do this mini doc as far as filming the interior of spaceship #2? Do they actually rebuild the interior of the craft. I'm sure Branson didn't authorize this right? The stock shots of the plane w space ship #2 I get. But the interior of #2 is perfect. The windows, dash and electronics. It's hard to believe the spent the money to recreate the interior with actor pilots. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Seems like serious money for a RUclips doc. Lmk. Thanks
A very cheaply made cockpit and green screens.
My question is why do we foot the bill for investigation and get fake footage instead?? Guess you don't care where half your paycheck goes?
It’s not a RUclips doc, it’s a Canadian TV show
Knock it off? What type of standardized lingo (or not) were they using in the control room?
It’s an Air Force term if you see something unsafe happening. You say “knock it off” and the crew has to get to a safe aircraft configuration and figure out if there is an issue.
7:55 "...one of the cockpits multifunction displays goes dark"
Black Screen Of Death?
Windows 7
Never knew this was a episode
Me nether, it just came out.
I used to order building materials from scaled composites back when they were a smaller company
🎉I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but I was a mechanical design engineer (mechanical drafter) for Lockheed & briefly for McDonnell Douglas. Those tail sections looked flimsey to me. A spoiler or structural member tying those tail sections together would be a good starting point.
You can not have 2 tails at that velocity. Minute differences in vibration flexure between the two tails would cause an opposing harmonic oscillation resulting in vibration amplification. The excessive vibration could move the heavy lever by itself without piolet error. Also, the tails appear to be overextended which only makes the situation of vibration more likely. If I were them i would dump the exotic fancy design for something more stable. Looks very cool but It will only happen again.
Once he said we have to Rush I knew it was disaster
Maybe there should have been a way to prevent the feather from being open early. Or some type of cockpit alarm to warn them of that type of mistake.
There is when they identify it as a catastrophic failure potential. I think there's some after the fact "I knew that" going on here, or there may be some other condition that could possibly happen that requires the feather be deployed outside the normal mission parameters.
This is an amazing feat of engineering, but the question must be asked: is it practical? All this engineering and effort just to get a vehicle to the edge of space and then come back down to Earth in a very short period of time makes this a high priced amusement ride with no other practical value. If the craft could be scaled up to then be able to achieve Earth orbit it then could be used for things beyond just a high priced amusement ride.
Similar to the wright flyer. Didn’t have any practical purpose.
@@robertgary3561 On the contrary, though the Wright Flyer was a very unstable powered aircraft, the Wright brothers used it as a testbed for their flying experiments to improve controlled flight. Matter of fact, after many years of testing, making changes and improvements, in 1909, the Wright Military Flyer was the world's first military aircraft purchased by the Army. Though the aircraft never saw combat, it was used to train pilots. The advancement of powered flight continued... So yes, the Wright Flyer did have purpose.
I stand by my opinion with this craft and also with the Blue Origin, it's just a high priced joy ride... SpaceX has made advances in rocket flight by leaps and bounds and they continue to do so...
@@DrTeddyMMM that’s my point. History will see these vehicles the same
@@robertgary3561 Yes, I understand it's mark in history, it's purpose will be marked as a Commercial Suborbital Space Tourism venture designed to take passengers on suborbital flights, offering a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth's curvature. So, a high priced carnival ride.
I understand that there have also been some research done during the 4 minutes of microgravity, but at what cost? The craft can carry six passengers and two pilots, each passenger seat cost $250,000, that x 6 = $1,500,000 just for passenger seating... total flight operations cost to launch is not publicly available, so it must be pretty hefty.
I guess when you have billions of $$ you play in a big way... Oh to dream... :)
For those of us old enough to remember, the term "white night" brings chills to us with a very negative connotation. Jonestown anyone??
I don't think most people associate the term with Jim Jones and his cult. It is still used for several unrelated and generally positive meanings. Although the term "white" seems to have fallen out of favor.
Branson still hasn't gone to true space. It's just a real-high carnival ride. 🤣
The NTSB is strangely un-curious about how an injector burn-through could have precipitated the mishap.
Having a display glitch is same stuff nasa disaster can happen
The image quality is so crisp. This must be new
I'm surprised that the engineers didn't stress the scenario of unlocking before 1.4 mach. A sensor and program adjustment preventing the unlock from happening is definitely necessary. Now in the sim it was flagged as an abort if not unlocked before reaching 1.8 mach. What are the dangers in that? And if they train for late unlocking, why not early unlocking?
Thats the problem with billionaires. They can waste their money on pipe dreams
they need to invest money into safety, not like they cant afford it
Instead of trying to find a cure for disease's, they waste money playing Star Trek.
At 0:44 - Not really. VG's business model had nothing to do with real space travel. Their whole goal is to sell rides for several hundred thousand dollars per seat to go up to about the Karman line and then right back down again. Just a quick recreational flight, coming right back down where they started. There's almost enough market there for one commercial outing every two or three years.
I find this ridiculous... The idea of taking civilian into space in a ship that folds in half at Mach speeds and if you get the timing wrong it explodes is nuts in my book.
Agree. Seems too fragile to me
Human greed
The feathering reentry concept is absolute genius. It is vastly safer than the X-15 or Space Shuttle re-entry.
@@EllipsisAircraft Not from where I'm standing...
@@fsoiberg You have no idea.
Just because a giant conglomerate screwed up the brilliant and proven development of Burt Rutan does not make it a bad concept.
Every airliner can be destroyed at will and within two seconds by the pilot with an improper control command.
The X-15 and space shuttle have several catastrophes to their record simply by operating as intended.
This aircraft was destroyed by the pilot who intentionally committed suicide by deploying the feathering device while in the atmosphere are high mach. This is evident by even a rudimentary inspection of the facts.
These guys are professionals but they are also human beings, excited but under stress wanting to get everything right.
Do the dogshit visibility windows on the white knight duce aircraft serve a purpose other than to look like ones on the space plane?
Branson should have stuck to simple delta wing lifting body design with a replaceable, ablative heat shield. The hinged feather system has too many possible points of failure.
It was a brilliant design. Spaceship 1 flew grew.
Lord Branson, why didn't ground control call for release ?
I first meet the Rutans in 1984 during the building of the Voyager.
YEAH, I WAS THERE. VERY SMALL CO. Pressure from Branson to perform.
With an innovative name like uh, Spaceship 2, I would question the innovation of the whole project. I'm sure Spaceship, uh, 3? will be 100% safe.
Seems like a bad disaster but an easy fix. The unlock needs to happen within a certain speed window. Nothing told the pilot that opening before the window would be a problem. He didn't know and was getting ahead. I would imagine any pilot lacks experience with this machine. But if they want the pilot to wait till the right speed, they should put in a fail safe to the lockout. They can accurately measure speeds with instruments at the speed of light. What if the pilot is out? Automate this unlock process and build in an override for the pilot. Make the pilot work but automate the work to prevent the pilot from having to. Why do we use cruise control when we drive? And we trust it. It works better than we do at a fixed mundane chore, and frees us up for other tasks.
why mess with the feathering system when you arent ready to use it yet?
I feel like the NTSB forces themselves to give an answer to even things that can't be answered. They basically chalked the crash up to pilot jitters. I don't necissarily believe 1 failed attempt in the simulator from a test pilot to be an ultimate answer to what happened. But the NTSB couldn't come up with anything else, so they just slapped a label on it and called it a day.
FLAWED DESIGN
They didn't have a fail safe on deployment of the feather system? It's like putting down the landing gear while your going mach 1
Why was there a fail-safe in place (for late unlocking of the wings into the "feather" position) which triggered an "abort" warning but nothing for early unlocking? In either event, simply "unlocking" the wing feathering system is not supposed to equal deployment. However, a primary fail-safe warning addressing not only an early unlocking but also any malfunction in the system, in this case, an unexpected event caused by "severe turbulence that overpowered the tail booms' securing mechanism," allowing for partial deployment, may have prevented this catastrophe. So why a warning at one end and not the other? NTSB did acknowledge this in their Conclusions under "Findings" but not in the "Primary Cause" follow-up paragraph in their Conclusions. I think it was unfair for the media to cite "pilot error" by Co-Pilot Alsbury due to his premature unlocking of the "feather" as the primary "cause" of the crash; when aerodynamically (which is why planes crash) it was "a design flaw in the feather actuators to hold the assembly in the unfeathered position with the locks disengaged." That tells me the faulty locking mechanism and lack of a fail-safe should have been cited as the main causal factors and not the actions of Alsbury. R.I.P. Mike Alsbury.
Novel incoming, sorry.
This video is pretty detailed and mostly accurate, at least according to the NTSB report. Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic did note that they didn't consider the possibility of a pilot releasing the feather lock early and as a result did not design any feather unlock prevention mechanism on the levers, which is an oversight.
One thing that is inaccurate is the error in the sim on late unlocking was not after the 1.8M point requiring an abort, it was after the 1.5M point which came with a caution so the pilots had sufficient advance notice to unlock the feathering prior to the 1.8M propulsion abort. Again, there was no similar caution or indication for when to begin unlock, it is possible (speculation) that the pilots and design team agreed this would be unnecessary clutter of the displays because everyone understood the requirement to wait to unlock the feathering until the appropriate speed was reached.
The pilots interviewed for the report indicated that they knew the requirement to wait to 1.4M to unlock the feathering, the surviving accident pilot stated the topic came up many times and it was common knowledge. The WK2 pilot for this flight, who was the SS2 pilot on the previous powered flight, stated he knew the reason was due to the forces holding the feathering closed past 1.4M so aerodynamics wasn't driving it to open, it would have to be commanded by the actuators.
Notably, the NTSB report indicated the prior two powered flights of SS2 had feather unlock speeds of 1.2M and 1.3M due to differences in rocket burn times, so the unlock speed was trending up, not down, and the window for unlocking the feathering shrunk, but according to the report there was 2.7 seconds from 1.4M to 1.5M in post-accident sim runs so the pilot would have 8-10 seconds to acknowledge the 1.4M and react, and still 5-6 seconds upon the 1.5M caution annunciation.
Some relevant projected timing for the flight:
1. Release + 1-2 sec: rocket ignition
2. Ignition + 7 sec: 0.8M callout by copilot, for pilot to start stab trim
3. 0.8M + 0-2 sec: stab trim readout by copilot as it approaches the -14 deg point
4. Trim readout + 12-14 sec: 1.4M and copilot unlocks feather levers.
5. 1.4M + 2.7 sec: 1.5M and if feather unlock not done, aural and visual annunciation to unlock feathering to prevent mission abort at 1.8M.
There was no interlock to prevent a single pilot action from causing an inflight catastrophic loss of the spacecraft which is contrary to best practices. That said, there's no interlock on an ejection handle in a fighter aircraft which, if solo, almost certainly leads to loss of the aircraft. There have been more than one inadvertent ejection after landing because a pilot pulled the ejection lever that was in a similar position as a seat lock handle in another fighter. So the aviation community doesn't foolproof everything, and it's possible that the reliability of a mechanical or electronic interlock was had a failure rate that was deemed to be similar to a pilot not following the checklist on a well-rehearsed and briefed mission. There did seem to be adequate communication of the Mach requirement for feathering and possibly the consequence since at least one pilot could say why, though it was not formally documented with a warning in the manual or test card.
If I had a quarter mil to take a two second trip to low Earth orbit. I think I'd rather build a bunker
Agree, at that price for that, well as it's said, that's well above my pay grade.
That be a nice vacation
A bunker to protect you from the falling debris when the ship that "1/4 million dollar guy" was in breaks up.
You'll need it.
This was so interesting and so different from other videos.
Have been wondering during your AI presentation how you would manage to cool down the beast, with water of course came your answer.
If you have video of when it disengage from the taxi what color was the burn? That might help.
Rogers county is home of the test pilot, thanks to Edwards Air Force Base.
Every father, mother, and child knows what it means to have a test pilot in the family.
You can go back when Edwards Air Force Base was known as Muroc Air Base. How many pilots have been lost to the adventure of the future of flight, plenty. That's why today, there are not as many test pilot's. Computers and AI can do a less risky approach to the comprehension of the aircraft.
They Say this is a human error but I think they should always be reminded pulling handle back too fast will be a dangerous move on there life.
How do you not have a safety switch that doesn't let the actuators unless its within certain parameters.
Sir Richard has no emotional compassion for his flight crew , sees them as business expendables .
ANY mention of potential catastrophic failure should be foremost in a pilot's mind, even if was mentioned 4 years previously. That's basic self preservation. Kinda like making sure that the gear are down before landing. Simulations should have been far more numerous.
That dudes wig in the commercial is like a Halloween costume. Dude you’re not fooling anybody but yourself…
Sir Richard funds the rebuild of The Flying Scotsman , Smiles and Kisses for everyone .
Usually this is where automated functions is usually developed to reduce human errors.
So essentially lack of redundancies and absence of sensors for critical functions were to blame in addition to operators error!
How can they go through burning in out of the atmosphere with a airplane rocket with no shields
The answer is silicone.
Absolutely silica