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| Well done report with photos of Virgin Galactic SpaceShip 2 Crash |
| 2014-11-01 |
| One pilot has died and another seriously injured during a test flight failure of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on Friday. The much-delayed suborbital space tourism vehicle suffered an engine problem, followed by a catastrophic failure that resulted in the spaceplane crashing to the ground in pieces. The flight test used a new fuel mixture formulation for the first time in flight. VSS Enterprise's first glide tests occurred in 2010, prior to the spacecraft eventually enjoying its first powered flight, which took place on April 29 of 2013 and was successful. During that flight, SS2 was powered using Sierra Nevada Corporation's RocketMotorTwo (RM2) – a throttleable hybrid rocket engine, that was fueled with hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTBP) and nitrous oxide. However, questions were raised on the fuel mix employed by this hybrid motor, not least due to the requirement to find additional power to propel SS2 to the required suborbital altitudes that would allow passengers to be classed as astronauts, but also due to apparent stability issues after 20 seconds of firing. Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic bosses opted to switch from the rubber-based HTPB to a thermoplastic polyamide as the solid fuel. Friday's mission was the first time this fuel was used during a flight test. It had been ground tested prior to flight. SNC has been quick to note the company had no involvement with the engine that was used during Friday's failure. "SNC was in the past involved as a subcontractor to Scaled Composites, the prime contractor of this program for Virgin Galactic and was previously involved with the three successful powered flight tests of SS2," SNC noted on Friday. "However, SNC's technical and program involvement ended in May of 2014 with Virgin Galactic's announcement to use its own internally developed technology for the SS2 rocket motor. "SNC had no involvement in the build or qualification testing of the motor used in this flight, nor in the integration of this motor to SS2. SNC was not engaged in any manner in the pre-flight safety or technical approvals or in the flight operations of the mission conducted today. We were not aware of the test today, nor present on site or remotely monitoring the testing." |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #2 Sounds like they did a lot of ground testing, but when they went to altitude, something changed - catastrophically. Might have been caused by temperature differential. We had that problem with the early X-class aircraft, too. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2014-11-01 17:11 |
| #1 ....That statement from SNC sounds to me like somebody knew this might be coming... Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2014-11-01 15:56 |