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Poor Pilot Training Blamed For Virgin Galactic Crash
astroengine writes: SpaceShipTwo co-pilot Michael Alsbury was not properly trained to realize the consequences of unlocking the vehicle's hinged tail section too soon, a mistake that led to his death and the destruction of the ship during a test flight in California last year. Responsibility for the accident falls to SpaceShipTwo manufacturer Scaled Composites, a Mojave, Calif., company owned by Northrop Grumman Corp, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined at a webcast hearing on Tuesday (PDF). Poor oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial spaceflights in the United States, was also a factor in the accident, the NTSB said.
That's pretty standard for all aviation training. Flying is easy, much easier than driving in a lot of ways. Not killing yourself is a lot harder. That's why pilots have reams and reams of checklists covering pretty much every conceivable problem that can happen. Similarly when training in a simulator, the operators can pretty much throw the book at you to see how you react to losing all your instruments and a wing while flying through a thunderstorm.
NASA's generic rulebook is over 2000 pages long and is well worth a flick through if you're a space geek http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/c...
You're an experienced test pilot of a rocket powered ship and you have to be specifically trained to anticipate the effects of slamming on the brakes while traveling at supersonic speed?
As touched on in a comment above, he didn't deploy them, he unlocked them. As I understand it, he unlocked them too early, so the deployment mechanism was unable to prevent them from deploying under the stress of supersonic flight at relatively low altitude.
You want to unlock them early, because, if you can't unlock them, you can still cut the engine and glide back. You don't want to unlock them too early, because this happens.
No laws were broken. There is no way to levy a fine. The NTSB is not in the business of fining individuals or organizations for violating rules or laws. That's the job of the FAA and other various agencies that oversee road vehicles, trains, and boats.
The NTSB does their best to identify the probable cause(s) of the incident, what factors led up to that incident, and, most importantly, what measures to take to prevent any future incidents. It's up to agencies, like the FAA in this case, to implement suggestions from the NTSB.
In this case, most of the blame appears to fall on the FAA.