aerocapture

"I'm gonna hit the brakes, and he'll fly right by."

The Perlan Project website: http://www.perlanproject.org/.

> "When accomplished at 1.4 Mach or greater (as required per the SpaceShipTwo checklist procedures and the PF-04 test card) the feather system remained retracted due to a sufficient closing pre-load from the feather actuators and favorable, tail-down aerodynamic loads."

> "On normal rocket-powered flights, checklist procedures called for this step to occur after rocket motor burn out while in space just prior to apogee."

I still haven't seen any information on exactly why this particular flight test card called for actuating the feather mechanism at some time other than apogee. Were they trying to test the flying qualities while feathered at a particular dynamic pressure? It doesn't make any sense for the copilot to move the unlock lever while the aircraft was still accelerating unless the test card called for it. And if it did, then did the engineers and test planners fail to take this possible failure mode into account before the flight?

Your comments about modern air-to-air missiles may be correct, but in 1968, the beyond-visual-range (BVR) engagement was more of a bomber general's fantasy than a reality. Kill probability of the AIM-7 Sparrow missile in those days was less than 10% [1].

Pilots' accounts of air combat in Vietnam routinely mention the firing of a salvo of missiles --rather than just one-- when a firing solution presented itself, due to the notorious unreliability of missiles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-7_Sparrow