Virgin Galactic says nobody was in any danger, including its founder and CEO Sir Richard Branson and three other passengers, aboard the landmark July 11 flight of its Unity spacecraft despite an FAA probe into the flight. The agency announced on Thursday that it was banning any further flights until it completes an investigation into the highly publicized flight in which the spacecraft deviated from its planned course. The deviation, which lasted a minute and 41 seconds, reportedly could have put Unity out of reach of a safe glide back to the company’s spaceport in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Virgin Galactic admits the deviation occurred but says it was all handled properly by the crew.
In the first “Star Wars” movie, Han Solo tells Luke Skywalker, “Flying in space ain’t like dusting crops, boy.”
Incredibly, Virgin Galactic has not learned that lesson. Your typical agricultural applicator has to fly precise flight paths to evenly apply pesticide to a client’s field. It seems Virgin Galactic cannot follow a pre-planned, programmed trajectory.
For a space operation, this is absolutely incredible. Knowledgeable engineers designed the flight path, knowledgeable engineers determined the typical errors that the vehicle might encounter in flying that path, and knowledgeable flight planners requested airspace restrictions sufficient to accommodate any expected deviation. The well-qualified pilots flew practice missions, and, it is assumed, assiduously practiced the mission in flight simulators.
And yet they couldn’t execute properly. Incredible. Heck, the recent Astra launch out of Kodiak had one its five rocket motors explode at launch, causing it to skitter across the field before it finally rose, and it STILL stayed within its cleared airspace.
Spaceflight requires precision, and the FAA is well-justified in demanding to know why Virgin Galactic was unable to follow its planned trajectory. I wouldn’t be surprised if the root cause was Virgin Galactic rushing to beat the Blue Origin launch.
Don’t jump too far to conclusions. In the SS1 program, the FAA defined reentry box was FAR smaller than requested (in addition to some other inane requirements), and they were only sometimes able to hit it. Perhaps it is the same here - this suborbital vehicle is not like any other aircraft or spacecraft, so to treat it arbitrarily in an unsuitable way would be a problem with the regulator, not the operator.
Very good point, Cameron. If that’s the case, I expect to see VG come out fighting, showing copies of the documentation where they asked for a larger restricted airspace and were denied.
Blaming the excursion on winds aloft opens a bigger can of worms. The VG vehicle isn’t guided by balsa tail fins and applying a little “Kentucky windage” with a three-foot long launch rod. It’s a bit more high-tech.
Thousands of airplanes cross the Atlantic and Pacific every year, and, for many of them, the winds aloft aren’t as forecast. Yet, flights from Tokyo to Seattle don’t end up in Portland; flights from New York to Paris don’t end up in Madrid. The aircraft monitor their position and compensate for unexpected drift.
It would amaze me if the VG spacecraft didn’t do likewise. I’d assume, if the pilots were hand-flying the spacecraft, that appropriate guidance would be provided through their flight director.
What happened make sense if the winds exceeded the capability of the spacecraft to react. I find this hard to believe… compensating for crosswinds at Mach 2 is FAR easier than my 80-knot homebuilt. Even if the crosswinds are ten times stronger.
But if it is true, that’s where that can of worms comes in. The FAA will, quite rightly, ask, “What are you doing to prevent it from happening again?” Will VG be required to launch a high-altitude weather mission before each launch?
If a trans-Pacific flight finds itself a few degrees of course, it has about 8 hours to correct for it.
If SS2 finds itself a few degrees off course (and such a thing is hardly unexpected given the nature of the trajectory, motor, wind variations etc), it has a few seconds at best to correct for it, then it’s outside of the sensible atmosphere and ballistic. From that point, they must wait until after re-entry to make adjustments - which is exactly what they did in this case.
Concept is the same. Both vehicles have plenty of time to adjust their profiles.
The VG spacecraft releases from it carrier about 45,000 to 50,000 feet…which is above most of the jet stream. The rocket motor runs for at least a minute after passing through the last vestiges of the jet stream, leaving plenty of time to correct the profile. Plus, of course, the vehicle should have perfect understanding of the winds aloft at the time it separates from the carrier…it’s been flying captive for tens of minutes.
Even descending, the time of exposure is going to be minor. Two minutes exposed to an unexpected jet stream of 200 MPH puts it off-course by just ~seven miles.
On ascent, there’s plenty of time to apply correction. We’re not talking Mr. Spock with an E6B here; the onboard computers should be tracking the spacecraft position vs. its planned profile. With a minute or so of engine burn left AFTER exiting the major portion of the jet stream, that’s plenty of time to update the required vehicle attitude.
Might have been more prudent to say “it was safer to continue than to abort” rather than “we pressed and it was fine”
Virgin agreed to FAA conditions to get flight authorization…if they didn’t think they could meet it and did it anyway, it is a management safety disregard, a big issue for pax ops (even in the unique civil space regulatory environment), or they encountered something they weren’t prepared for and it’s an engineering/ops issue to investigate/resolve before flights resume…the decision not to abort when encountering abort criteria is a downstream, related, but separate issue, if not evaluated at the time as a safer outcome to continue vs “get-there-itis” with boss onboard and heavy PR interest (get-there-first-itis?), I’d expect some interest in PIC and Ops team decisionmaking process.
Amazing the number of who were either on-board or in the control center for this flight. This first hand knowledge should clear this up rather quickly.
Lost in Space. Be off by a few hundred feet on the RUUDY.6 at KTEB and see what happens to you. I am sure that any one of us who deviate from a flight plan would be taken to the woodshed. It is your turn to drop trou Sir Richard. Show your cheeks, take your licks, and get on with it. To blame the error on the wind……would be to tell your parents that it was your brothers fault for pitching the ball that you hit through the garage window (or the barbers fault for your bad haircut).
Well said. How does it go? “We’re from the FAA, and we’re not happy until you’re not happy.”
Perhaps the investigation that really should take place is over the fact that NONE of the three-letter agencies are authorized by the Constitution. If we want aviation to prosper, perhaps grounding those folks - permanently - might be the best course of action.
I’m with you on this Ron. I started my career 45 years ago launching satellites into orbit. This is just best practice.
Even though there were no lives at risk on our launches, the system was grounded until all anomalies that were detected on a mission were analyzed, a root cause determined, and corrective action taken. Space launch (even sub-orbital) is a very unforgiving environment and you just don’t take unnecessary chances.
The FAA is entirely in the right here. Saying a major deviation is no big deal as the flight crew handled it is not an acceptable answer. VG needs to be able to explain the root cause of the deviation and how it will be prevented in the future.
The reason for the investigation is to determine why they continued with the mission when, as the New Yorker article asserted, the safest alternative was to abort. During any flight, if a pilot is faced with a “…scare the s*** out of you…” decision, and the pilot does not err on the side of safety, the FAA will investigate and come down hard. Excuses such as “well, the boss was on board” or “it would have cost a lot to do that” are not going to fly anymore. After the 737 Max debacle, the FAA is under incredible pressure (deservedly so, brought on by their own past ignorance and lack of oversight).
Virgin Galactic is a lot closer in concept to the X-15 program than to any other current launch system. Test pilots pushing the edge of aircraft capabilities, materials, their own skills, are highly desired traits in the experimental, go where no man has gone before realm. But commercial aviation? Anyone who does not believe that Richard Branson’s presence and the press this flight was receiving did not influence the decisions made has their head in a very huge pile of sand. Virgin Galactic’s pilots are the safety system, not computers, and if their human safety system is influenced by money, peer pressure, the bosses’ egos, then Houston, we have a problem.