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Poor Pilot Training Blamed For Virgin Galactic Crash

Posted by Soulskill on from the fix-it-and-keep-trying dept.

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.

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. If there was a criteria for safe unlocking by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If there was a criteria for safe unlocking of the hinged tail section then why wasn't it interlocked until the criteria was satisfied?

    A bigger error here is reliance on operator training. It's the least reliable form of ensuring a certain outcome.

    1. Re:If there was a criteria for safe unlocking by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can't imagine the engineers who designed this wouldn't be aware of those consequences. In fact, I'd go so far as to call this a partial failure of the engineering department as well - specifically, the ones who created the cockpit controls. I mean, the spacecraft basically had a single lever in the cockpit which if pulled at the wrong time would result in the fiery destruction of the spacecraft and death to all aboard. That's a hell of a consequence for a single mistake in the cockpit.

      Granted, clarity in hindsight and all that, but it just seems surprising to me that this possibility wasn't given more thought, given that this was a major feature of the spacecraft. You can imagine they're probably taking a second look at other systems and trying to figure out what the potential outcomes of human error might be and ways to mitigate those errors. At least, I hope they're doing that.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  2. Re:What will kill me next? by Whiternoise · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

  3. Re:Experienced test pilot? by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:NTSB fines? penalties? by zamboni1138 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Maybe he thought that "Unlock" would only unloc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It appears that deploying the feather was a multi-step operation. The flap covering the feather is unlocked, then the flap is opened, then the feather is deployed. The pilot probably knew that the feather could not be deployed at the speed they were going, but did not know/understand that the flap could not stay closed if unlocked at the speed they were going. Thus, the pilot unlocked the flap, and from there, whatever other latch that made step 2 work broke, the flap opened and the feather deployed on its own.

    If the unlock switch had some god-awful name describing exactly what it did

    Maybe the button will be renamed "Remove Restraints Holding Feather Flap Closed During Transonic Region".