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Spaceship carrying Richard Branson flew off course, FAA is investigating
During the historic spaceflight of Sir Richard Branson in July, near the end of the burn of the VSS Unity spacecraft's engine, a red light appeared on a console. This alerted the crew to an "entry glide-cone warning." Pilots Dave Mackay and Mike Masucci faced a split-second decision: kill the rocket motor or take immediate action to address their trajectory problem. This scenario is outlined in a new report by Nicholas Schmidle, a writer with more insight into Virgin Galactic than… (arstechnica.com) Daha Fazlası...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Is the FAA now declaring a 200nm EEZin space?
I'm beginning to tire of the cookie cutter answers that start with “The safety of ..."
To the point any time I read or hear it, all I see is a room of lawyers and suits.
To the point any time I read or hear it, all I see is a room of lawyers and suits.
High altitude winds are Things That Can Be Quantified as to flight levels, direction and speed. In fact, more than one SpaceX Falcon launch has been postponed late in the countdown due to this precise reason. That's PRElaunch, not after lighting the candle.
Maybe there's an SR-71 jock in the house who can tell us how much force the wind can exert above 50k feet, the nominal drop altitude for SpaceShip Two.
In any case there are data for the wind and the actual flight profile, which the FAA is more than capable of correlating.
Maybe there's an SR-71 jock in the house who can tell us how much force the wind can exert above 50k feet, the nominal drop altitude for SpaceShip Two.
In any case there are data for the wind and the actual flight profile, which the FAA is more than capable of correlating.
This appears to be the FAA providing or VG requesting too narrow of an airspace block.
For a flight like this, it would be better (since who else is up that high?) to just request a larger "blocK" to fly in.
I suspect this will become the status quo once they get things sorted out.
For a flight like this, it would be better (since who else is up that high?) to just request a larger "blocK" to fly in.
I suspect this will become the status quo once they get things sorted out.
Loose lips, sink ships and Chief Test Pilot careers.
Sounds to me like the issue was that the pilots should have aborted and didn't. I'm not smart enough to know how much risk was involved in over-riding the abort. I'm glad the flight was a success. I hope Scott Manley does a video about this on YouTube. His analyses of these types of things is always very interesting and informative.