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The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

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Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#191

Post by unityByFreedom »

aerosmile wrote: post #175
tdeck wrote: post #76

> “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people,” Todd Ericson, a retired Air Force Colonel and Virgin Galactic’s then vice-president of safety and test, told me in a 2020 interview. I'm pretty impressed by this guy. Not only did he quit his VP job when he saw these safety problems, but he went around giving interviews about them. It strikes me that very few people would have done the same.

> Not only did he quit his VP job when he saw these safety problems Agree, great guy, putting his ethics ahead of his career > but he went around giving interviews about them Hmmm, gets a bit murky here. If he wanted to save lives, there's a very clear path to alerting the FAA. But he didn't do that. This sounds a bit more like he was trying to save his career. Which brings in question why he quit in the first place,…

> If he wanted to save lives, there's a very clear path to alerting the FAA.

Is there? I doubt you can just call up the FAA and be like, "hey, my former employer is going to get people killed." The FAA will naturally call the employer and the employer will naturally defend themselves, calling the ex-employee a kook.

You probably need to generate awareness of the issues in public and show the FAA you're not the only engineer who thinks those practices are unsafe. Then, and only then when you have some accredited clout behind your accusation, can you start holding the FAA's feet to the fire for inaction. And after that, maybe they will investigate.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#192

Post by andi999 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #117

> “ A private program can’t afford to lose anybody,” Branson said. Worth noting that Virgin Galactic is currently the only private space program to have killed anyone so far. This quote is from before the fatal 2014 crash, but the FAA makes it pretty clear that a virgin galactic had a cavalier attitude towards crew safety[0] back then too. Combined with this article, that paints a picture of Virgin Galactic as a genu…

Why would it kill a lot of people? Wouldn't people prob stop flying with them after the first crash?

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#194

Post by vultour »

darkcha0s wrote: post #190
ashtonkem wrote: post #117

> “ A private program can’t afford to lose anybody,” Branson said. Worth noting that Virgin Galactic is currently the only private space program to have killed anyone so far. This quote is from before the fatal 2014 crash, but the FAA makes it pretty clear that a virgin galactic had a cavalier attitude towards crew safety[0] back then too. Combined with this article, that paints a picture of Virgin Galactic as a genu…

>activation at too low a speed would cause the vehicle to break apart. A breathtakingly bad design for a spacecraft. I do hope you know that outside its designed flight envelope, almost any space craft / rocket / airplane breaks apart pretty fast.

It is very difficult, and often impossible with all systems operational, to get a modern airliner outside of its flight envelope. I'd imagine a tiny glider with a rocket bolted on is a different story.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#195

Post by andi999 »

caconym_ wrote: post #162
lanevorockz wrote: post #159

Too much narrative and too little facts. I don’t care how much the journalist hates space travel, just get to the point. All that rumble means, he personally believes that “a more risky” correction for a red light was taken because the pilot was afraid of Branson being angry. A bit of a silly argument when you are talking about life and death situation.

> A bit of a silly argument when you are talking about life and death situation. "Get-there-itis", a.k.a. plan continuation bias, is a real thing that's gotten a lot of aviators and their passengers killed.

It totally is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_air_disaster Seems they didn't wanted to be late and there were quite a few important passengers.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#196

Post by tsukikage »

pinewurst wrote: post #78
bryananderson wrote: post #36

I recommend Schmidle’s recent book “Test Gods” if you are interested in Virgin Galactic and test piloting. Schmidle is not an engineer and I would have enjoyed a deeper dive into Virgin Galactic’s design choices, but it is a great book about (among other things) the tensions that emerge when a complex technical project is overseen from a distance by utterly nontechnical, PR-oriented upper management. The company’s co…

SpaceShipTwo (and SpaceShipOne) are fascinating to me because they're so _not_ general purpose vehicles, yet are sold and in most cases perceived as such. SS1 was conceived by one of the most creative designers in aviation as a point solution for the X-Prize contest - the minimal design/implementation to precisely solve that problem in the most cost effective way possible (as detailed in "Test Gods"). This cobbled to…

One learns quickly in software development not to trust people who say "let's just put this hack in to get the demo out of the way; we'll clean it up later". Later never comes; today's prototype is tomorrow's production.

I'd have thought people would be more cautious with actual physical engineering when lives are at risk, but I guess the incentives are the same everywhere.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#197

Post by mianos »

vultour wrote: post #194
darkcha0s wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>activation at too low a speed would cause the vehicle to break apart. A breathtakingly bad design for a spacecraft. I do hope you know that outside its designed flight envelope, almost any space craft / rocket / airplane breaks apart pretty fast.

It is very difficult, and often impossible with all systems operational, to get a modern airliner outside of its flight envelope. I'd imagine a tiny glider with a rocket bolted on is a different story.

This is not true. In most cases you will get warnings but if you are hands-on you can fly into an unrecoverable situation, specially if you are not very high.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#198

Post by majkinetor »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #94
ragnot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hate to admit it, "ego" has driven so much innovation in space that it was probably inevitable that something like this would happen.

We used to have smart guys in competition. Edison vs. Tesla. Not we have rich business savy guys with not much of a science background holding the cards. I have met very few wealthy men, young or old, who had great ideas. It's almost like the money dulls their brains? And their vanity projects are usually way out of their wheelhouse. It's the same with Writers. I have read very few wealthy guys shop could write. They…

Not really a competition. Comparing Tesla to Edison is like comparing Virgin Galactic to SpaceX.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#199

Post by AndrewOMartin »

rkagerer wrote: post #158
bryananderson wrote: post #36

I recommend Schmidle’s recent book “Test Gods” if you are interested in Virgin Galactic and test piloting. Schmidle is not an engineer and I would have enjoyed a deeper dive into Virgin Galactic’s design choices, but it is a great book about (among other things) the tensions that emerge when a complex technical project is overseen from a distance by utterly nontechnical, PR-oriented upper management. The company’s co…

This may be a smidgen off-topic, but any good books to recommend about either the Apollo program or SpaceX that do delve a little deeper into engineering challenges and design choices?

This is a thread about book recommendations on rocketry. I feel obliged to mention Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (Rutgers University Press, 1972) now back in print.

The author worked on said propellants between 1949 and 1970 (according to Wikipedia) so there's no SpaceX, but might be some Apollo.

Anyway, the book is legendary.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#200

Post by vultour »

mianos wrote: post #197
vultour wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very difficult, and often impossible with all systems operational, to get a modern airliner outside of its flight envelope. I'd imagine a tiny glider with a rocket bolted on is a different story.

This is not true. In most cases you will get warnings but if you are hands-on you can fly into an unrecoverable situation, specially if you are not very high.

The systems prevent you from flying outside of the flight envelope, not from smashing the plane into the ground. Of course you can crash if you want, but the plane will still be within the flight envelope.
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