Do we know that there was an ejection system failure? Co-pilot could have been incapacitated or killed by the explosion, and thus unable to eject.
I understand ejection often results in injuries. I’ve heard people talk about the Martin-Baker seats in F-4s, and call them ‘Martin-Breaker’ because broken bones were common enough. I’ve heard that ejecting from an A-4 Skyhawk in its Douglas seat might be problematic because the cockpit was so narrow. I remember seeing a photo of an A-6 bombardier who ejected during the Gulf War, and thought the Iraqis had beaten the hell out of him – but it was the ejection.
I think you may be right in your opinion. People sort of expect rocket engines to explode. No matter how reliable they become, it’s got to be in the back of one’s mind. OTOH, people expect emergency egress systems to work every time. There are any number of scenarios where ejection simply isn’t possible. I wonder if this was a case of ‘not possible’, or if it was a failure in the system – or if the co-pilot did eject and suffered fatal injuries during it.
I’m fairly sure Burt is now retired. I think he lives in Idaho.
This is so tragic. My thoughts are with all of the Branson team.
I keep hearing he was months away from offering space rides. I too wonder how much this will harm that effort.
I don’t think anyone really believed Branson when he says “A few months away”. Well, maybe they believed it the first few hundred times he said it, but not recently.
I’m upset because two counties in New Mexico voted to pay a sales tax to finance the Virgin spaceport, and it narrowly passed. Ok, I get that, but then we didn’t build a spaceport, we built a long ass runway in the middle of nowhere.
Companies like the one Musk and Bezos are associated with want real launch facilities like the launch complexes at Cape Canaveral. We don’t have that. We have a runway for planes.
All from Virgin Galactic - Wikipedia :
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In July 2008 Richard Branson predicted the maiden space voyage would take place within 18 months
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In October 2009, Virgin Galactic announced that initial flights would take place from Spaceport America based on a “safety-driven schedule,” which it hoped to achieve “within two years.”
On December 7, 2009, SpaceShipTwo was unveiled at the Mojave Spaceport. Branson told the 300 people attending, each of whom had booked rides at $200,000 each, that flights would begin “in 2011”.
In April 2011, Branson announced further delays, saying “I hope 18 months from now, we’ll be sitting in our spaceship and heading off into space”.
On May 14, 2013, Richard Branson stated on Virgin Radio Dubai’s Kris Fade Morning Show that he would be aboard the first public flight of SpaceShipTwo, which had again been re-scheduled, this time to December 25, 2013.
Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said “We are progressively closer to our target of starting commercial service in 2014".
In September 2014, Richard Branson described the intended date for the first commercial flight as February or March of 2015.
Well, from skimming the mainline news today, I conclude that Branson and his ilk are wildly irresponsible juveniles, playing at an adult endeavor, who will casually kill any number of people in search of their improbable goals, and that there’s little we can do as a nation to bring this out of control epidemic of private spaceflight efforts under control. No one knows how many will die, only that fatalities will continue because these guys think having billions is a double-oh license.
(Video for the above is a fiftyish white guy wearing a “Washington DC has just been nuked” face.)
So 2025 then? Geez, it’s like he’s building the coolest new nuke plant.
Isn’t there a certain altitude a plane has to be below before the pilot can eject? If they’re in a high atmosphere flight and the plane is in distress and falling uncontrollably, how would a pilot know when it’s safe to eject?
“And in unrelated news, Mr. Branson has recently put his Arizona beachhouse up for auction. The mansion, which overlooks the Sea of Guadalajara, is expected to sell for over a million dollars.”
This article says that co-pilot Alsbury “died immediately when SpaceShipTwo blew apart mid-air” - implying no chance to eject.
So if NASA hires a company to build spacecraft (great scott! the builder of the lunar module also builds canoes and delivery trucks - amateur hour!!!) and a wealthy and imaginative private citizen hires a company to build spacecraft, what is the difference?
The difference is that NASA is employing public monies to do so and has an obligation to see that the contractor is being responsible. A purely private space venture is merely subject to liability as dictated by legal contracts and public policy e.g. it must satisfy requirements to protect public interest and mitigate hazards, but any clients may agree to liability waivers (so-called “Gentlemen adventurers’ agreements”) agains their personal interests and well-being.
However, it is important for the space industry overall to demonstrate responsible operation and ethical practices in engineering. The nascent commercial and civil aviation industry went through a period very similar to this between circa 1930 and WWII where the number of mechanical failures from bad design and poor maintenance, and irresponsible operation of aircraft threatened to stall commercial development because of the hazard to the overall public. The International Civil Aviation Organization was formed at the Convention on International Civil Aviation in Chicago, USA in order to address international regulation of air travel and establish rules for airspace control, aircraft registration and safety, response to accidents and incidents, and the rights of the signatories for air travel. The United States created the Federal Aviation Agency (now the Federal Aviation Administration under the Department of Transportation) in 1958 to pick up the regulatory responsibilities previously handled by the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce to allow the government to have strong enforcement of air travel safety and coordinated regulation of air traffic control in response to a number of high profile accidents, particularly the mid-air collision between a United Airlines SuperConnie and a TWA DC-7 over the Grand Canyon in 1956.
As much as I hate to be in agreement with Jeffrey Kluger, who is a transparent fop for Lockheed Martin, it would absolutely be prudent for the United States to both develop domestic regulation of commercial spaceflight interests as well as foster an international effort to regulate commercial spaceflight internationally (as many nations will have no choice but have space launch trajectories which overfly other nations) in order to forestall the kind of catastrophic hazards which may be posed by operators to not only their clients but the general public on the ground, and the financial impact on other potential entrants into commercial spaceflight. Such regulation has to ride a balance between being effective and enforceable while not being onerous or forestalling technology development.
Stranger
If nobody gets injured by ejection seats, then they’re not built right. An ejection seat has the conflicting design parameters that you want to get the people out of the crashing plane as quickly as possible, but you also don’t want the ejection system itself to cause too many injuries. The proper design will be exactly at the point where the marginal increase in injuries from ejecting too violently is equal to the marginal decrease in injuries from getting away from the doomed aircraft quicker. If you have no injuries at all from the ejection system, then you’re not at that point yet.
The process to do this is already underway and has been for several years. I don’t expect it to happen overnight and, just like aviation regulations, I expect it to be a continually evolving and updated document(s).
The NTSB investigating this crash is an extension of their prior work in aviation and I expect they will be an integral part of space travel safety and investigations going forward.
The FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST) does issue licenses for operating single space launches and permits to operate a space launch facility, but has minimal actual oversight or expertise over launch vehicles or operators, and is mostly focused on assuring that the trajectory does not overfly major municipalities or though existing commercial flight lanes. It does not provide any guidance on either interacting with the existing US government Eastern and Western Ranges (operated by the USAF 45SW and 30SW, respectively) nor in establishing a private operational range capability other than some very vague-ish requirements to track a launch vehicle and have provisions for termination of the propulsion system should the launch fall outside of hazard lines.
This is a particular problem when it comes to new type vehicles that do not operate like traditional expendable multistage rockets, and new operating ranges that do not fly out of US government controlled launch facilities. The FAA, which is largely chartered with civil aviation, air traffic control, and implementation of the NextGen system, really doesn’t have either the focus or expertise to deal with this. This is problematic in the case of new modes of operation that may create new hazards to the public at large, to wit the return of a partially fueled stage to landing site adjacent to an occupied area, e.g. the reusable Falcon 9v1.1 Stage 1 or the SpaceShipTwo. In order to continue to foster innovation while preventing the sort of accidents which may pose both a public hazard and retard support for developing the nascent commercial space launch industry, a regulatory framework which provides clear guidance but offers sufficient flexibility to cope with new modes of operation is necessary. This will require a different type of expertise than either the FAA or existing government-sponsored aerospace advisory organizations (e.g. The Aerospace Corporation) are prepared to provide, and it most certainly should include representatives from the aerospace industrial base in a participatory and transparent fashion to assure that no one party uses regulation as a means to stifle innovation.
Another concern, which I touched on previously, is that by the very nature of space launch and space travel vehicles which have launched from US soil will cross international boundaries on their way to orbit and will operate outside of the ostensible jurisdiction of the US once in orbit; however, per the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the US (and all other signatories) are responsible for the results of objects controlled by US interests in orbit. Current US government regulation is largely limited to controlling communications bandwidth and preventing the use of privately controlled spacecraft from being used for “adverse surveillance”, i.e. they are not allowed to surveil classified US government facilities or other objects in space (without extraordinary approvals). Some regulatory body–likely an international concern–will have to step up and provide guidance and regulatory control over orbital space to prevent it from being used in a manner inconsistent with the public good, e.g. for warfare, industrial espionage and adverse surveillance, et cetera as well as providing guidance for the retirement of vehicles at end-of-life. While there is currently a standing “rule” that objects in LEO should be deorbited within 25 years of end-of-life, and objects in higher orbit should be moved into “graveyard orbits”, there is no enforceability to this rule and many spacecraft have not followed it, which may lead to a new form of pollution which could limit future access to certain orbits or pose substantially greater hazard to launch vehicles passing through lower orbits.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is not a regulatory agency, is not part of or report to the FAA, does not have any authority to impose restrictions, regulations, or penalties, and merely exists to investigate accidents, determine root cause, and provide recommendations to government and industry to avoid future accidents of like cause. While the NTSB will no doubt investigate future accidents with launch vehicles, it should not be considered to be part of a solution for dealing with the hazards presented by new operators and novel forms of space transportation.
Stranger
I seem to recall that some models of Russian ejection seats adjust the ejection parameters depending on the situation, going from “gee I guess I better be going” to “holy crap I’m outta here!”. Both for the actual ejection phase and the parachute deployment.
In other words, these space vehicles are treated much like experimental aviation vehicles - the FAA is happy to let you kill yourself experimenting, just make sure you don’t take anyone else with you.
Is this really an issue? Doesn’t that provide maximum scope for innovation and minimal stifling?
Why should private space launches be restricted to military launch facilities? Do we only allow commercial air travel from military bases? If you want private industry you have to let them develop private infrastructure that serves their needs and not just that of the military.
NO ONE has the “focus”, the “expertise”, or the experience to deal with civil space travel because, until now, we haven’t had any. It’s this thing called “new”.
Seems to me more logical to extend the FAA to space traffic control duties than to start completely new, as the FAA does have some experience in managing the movement of objects in three dimensions.
OK, let’s be clear on something: there WILL be accidents. Some of them WILL pose hazards to people on the ground - just like commercial aviation. You can’t change that. What you can do is have an agency… oh, we could call it the Federal Above Atmosphere Agency or FAAA - that provides traffic control and designates routes that minimizes the risk.
And, by the way - WHO is qualified to offer “guidance”? No one has done commercial space travel before, it’s a new thing. OK, NASA has some expertise - what makes you think they aren’t already contributing? NASA has been making contributions to all sorts of above-the-ground transportation enterprises for decades, from, yes, space to travel to boring but vital stuff like research in airframe icing and how to deal with it.
Then again, Burt Rutan used to say some pretty scathing things about NASA and how they stifled innovation, so don’t assume that how it has been done up to now is the only or best way to do it.
You mean, the way NASA was opposed to civilian space travel for decades?
What companies do you feel “represent” the nascent civilian space travel industry? Name names please. Wouldn’t Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic be on that list?
You mean… like airplanes cross international boundaries? And an American pilot can take off from American soil and fly somewhere else outside the jurisdiction of the US? You somehow think this is a problem that requires entirely new solutions rather than extensions of what we already have in place?
Which recommendations have had a major impact on safety. I don’t understand why you diminish their contributions. The do their core mission extremely well, to the point that they have been integral to making aviation the safest form of transportation in history despite the inherent risks in flight.
Right. Because up until now the NTSB has had zero effect on aviation safety - oh, wait, it has. Seriously, why wouldn’t the primary accident investigation agency be part of moving forward with civilian space travel? Do you propose starting an entirely separate agency to investigate space accidents? Why?