SpaceShipTwo Crash

[DQuaN]

Virgin Galactic are leading the race to be the first to offer 'Space Tourism' but suffered a major setback as it seems SpaceShipTwo has crashed with one confirmed dead. Not many more details yet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29857182

This really underlines the dangers and challenges that faces this kind of venture. Apart from timescale setbacks they haven't really had any disasters until now. How safe can space tourism really be?

 

[Downhill Dino]

Not a good week for space travel.

 

[GTPorsche]

Every new advance of flight has been met with disaster. With that disaster comes lessons of what needs to be different to prevent those disasters from happening, or at least making it more unlikely to happen.

 

[Robin]

Getting into space in dangerous and there has been this gradual complacency towards it. In trying to make it feel accessible / easy they have forgotten that it really shouldn't be, it should be damn difficult! Just like the space shuttle, it was conceived as a truck and they expected to send it up weekly... then reality struck and thousands of fingers crossed every time the thing took off.

 

[Grayfox]

Rocket boosters just want to explode we just like to focus this explosion and control it to break earth's gravitational pull and get lift.
Sadly there is very little room for error.

 

[Swagger897]

I read somewhere this one had a new propulsion unit and different fuel mixture than previous versions... Can't find where I read it though..

Sucks for the people who paid $200,000 now..

 

[prisonermonkeys]

It remains to be seen what caused the crash. It would be premature to assume the new propulsion system caused it.

 

[Swagger897]

I read it had a new, did not say cause was directly towards. More information for less informed people.

 

[Imari]

How safe can space tourism really be?

How safe can aeroplanes really be? We have the odd accident, but millions of people routinely fly without a second thought.

If you go back far enough, the same was probably thought of major sea voyages and the like, which were pretty risky on their own.

Space flight is still in it's infancy. It's ridiculous to try and judge how safe it might one day become simply because it's dangerous to start with.

 

[niky]

So far, it hasn't been all that deadly for space tourists out there.

Statistically, still not as safe as flying, but relaxing the draconian requirements previously in place is the only way to get the sector moving again.

We need to get into space. If we want our species to survive the eventual end of our planet, colonization is the only viable option.

 

[TenEightyOne]

How safe can space tourism really be?

An irrelevant question in a science or engineering and I daresay here too. A much more useful question is "How dangerous can space tourism really be?", that's how we find and push the boundaries.

I read one of the programme leaders saying "exploration is built on days like these", it's sad but true.

 

[Grayfox]

How the hell does that SCM 348 White Knight II fly?
Spaceship Two would cause huge drag which would make flight a pain as it would make maneuverability very hard hard

 

[Imari]

How the hell does that SCM 348 White Knight II fly?
Spaceship Two would cause huge drag which would make flight a pain as it would make maneuverability very hard hard

Good job it's not a fighter plane then.

 

[Grayfox]

Good job it's not a fighter plane then.

Doesn't need to be a fighter, even the boeing that carried the Apllo shuttle had decent maneuverability as non of the flight surfaces had a hulking thing underneath.

 

[TenEightyOne]

How the hell does that SCM 348 White Knight II fly?
Spaceship Two would cause huge drag which would make flight a pain as it would make maneuverability very hard hard

Drag is (basically) a function of movement through fluid, I guess at their launch altitude (50,000ft) they've already bypassed the "sticky stuff" and need as much hit-on-the-air (surface incidence) as they can get while they're in rocket flight. Once they're descending they're much lighter... although the descent is a bit cleverer than that.

 

[Imari]

Doesn't need to be a fighter, even the boeing that carried the Apllo shuttle had decent maneuverability as non of the flight surfaces had a hulking thing underneath.

The point that you seem to have missed is:

Why exactly does a plane whose sole purpose is to carry something to altitude need to be maneuverable?

It's never going to dodge around anything. It's never going to be close to any other object unless something has gone horribly wrong or it's landing. All those really tricky airports in the world that need weird approaches and take off corridors will never see one of these. It needs to be stable enough to get above weather (if they even intend to launch in non-perfect conditions), and that's about it.

What advantage would being maneuverable have for a plane of that type, bar the obvious minimum amount needed to take off, land, and circle to altitude (which is likely met by making it airworthy enough to fly in the first place)?

 

[Exorcet]

How the hell does that SCM 348 White Knight II fly?
Spaceship Two would cause huge drag which would make flight a pain as it would make maneuverability very hard hard

It's because the wings have an aspect ratio of a billion and five mostly. Very typical for high altitude low speed aircraft.

Spaceship Two also shouldn't make enough drag to be a problem, the whole system would have been built with the drag in mind.

 

[Swagger897]

It's because the wings have an aspect ratio of a billion and five mostly. Very typical for high altitude low speed aircraft.

Spaceship Two also shouldn't make enough drag to be a problem, the whole system would have been built with the drag in mind.

U2 is a good example..

 

[TenEightyOne]

U2 is a good example..

Running at $400million to date is hardly pro bono.

 

[Swagger897]

Running at $400million to date is hardly pro bono.

I was more or less talkng about the surface area of the wing...

 

[Touring Mars]

It's lucky this didn't happen on the first commercial flight - Justin Bieber would have been on board...

 

[Swagger897]

It's lucky this didn't happen on the first commercial flight - Justin Bieber would have been on board...

Didn't Clooney buy a first ticket too?

 

[Dotini]

The whole idea of "space tourism" will come under review and question, as the accident investigation works through a lengthy investigation.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The whole idea of "space tourism" will come under review and question, as the accident investigation works through a lengthy investigation.

It will in the media, the majority of whom wouldn't risk their lives to visit space.

I'd do it if I could afford it and sod the risk.

 

[Swagger897]

Yup^^

This project has been in the works for a loooooong time now... I remember in elementary school reading a book of the same thing, and thought it would take forever. It still is, but it is getting closer each step.

 

[Dotini]

Pilot error.
http://news.yahoo.com/pilot-mystery...spaceship-crash-probe-231919732--finance.html

 

[DQuaN]

Yes and no. He wasn't supposed to unlock the tail at that stage of the flight but unlocking it does not deploy it. Something else happened that caused the tail section to deploy.

Granted if he hadn't have unlocked it early, it probably wouldn't have deployed by mistake. We don't know if that had become common practice during test flights, or if perhaps the pilots were getting incorrect airspeed data.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Pilot error.
http://news.yahoo.com/pilot-mystery...spaceship-crash-probe-231919732--finance.html

Not so far, it seems the feathering mechanism deployed "without pilot command" having been unlocked (not commanded to deploy). Why the pilot chose to do that at just over Mach 1 rather than at 1.4 is under investigation - he'd have been well aware of the potential for disaster in every move of every control surface so he's barely likely to have knocked it while handing out the McDonalds. He unlocked the mechanism for a reason, right now it seems likely that he believed the airspeed to have been significantly higher than it truly was.