Re:Virgin Galactic flights grounded over Branson spaceflight...
by nieve on Friday September 03, 2021 @12:02AM
(#28400298)
Either they deviated by a large margin or the area they were cleared for was too small because you don't just get mildly blown off course enough to exit a decent clearance area.
Re:Virgin Galactic flights grounded over Branson spaceflight...
by beerandt on Friday September 03, 2021 @08:21AM
(#28403187)
Maybe. There are lots of explanations for not having a larger test area, or for miscalculating a manually piloted crafts mach 3+ trajectory.
But you're missing the bigger point.
It may have been completely unrelated to weather. By "something similar" I mean an innocent, isolated, non-cultural and non-conspiratorial explanation, that won't involve the FAA digging (or having to dig) any deeper than the superficial proximate cause.
It was a test flight of a manually piloted craft. To some extent, things will not go as expected.
Boeing and Russias last manned flights weren't manually controlled, and both had significant problems- early rocket shutdown and an unintentional, initially unstoppable thruster firing.
Yeah it needs investigating, but it's hardly unexpected or uncommon, especially for a test flight.
From their perspective, the flight went off course for 2 mins, and they're looking for the proximate cause. They're looking for a specific safety issue, not any underlying generalized sense of a rotten safety culture at the company.
The acute problem might lead directly to a bigger general issue, if there's some direct evidence of fudged risk analysis or some specific, similar, overtly wrong behavior.
But more likely, it'll just be: we misjudged how it would handle that specific wind and were blown off course. Or something similar.
ETA: Has it even been established that the warning light/entry angle was the cause of or directly related to the airspace violation?
Other than the new yorker author's assumption?