The Red Warning Light On Richard Branson's Space Flight (newyorker.com) 76
Nicholas Schmidle writes via the New Yorker: On July 11th, nearly a minute into the rocket trip carrying Richard Branson, the British billionaire, to space, a yellow caution light appeared on the ship's console. The craft was about twenty miles in the air above the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, and climbing, traveling more than twice the speed of sound. But it was veering off course, and the light was a warning to the pilots that their flight path was too shallow and the nose of the ship was insufficiently vertical. If they didn't fix it, they risked a perilous emergency landing in the desert on their descent. [...] Virgin Galactic's space vehicle is unique among its competitors. Whereas SpaceX and Blue Origin operate traditional, vertical-launch rockets that are automated by engineers, Virgin Galactic uses a piloted, winged rocket ship. Every test flight is crewed, which makes each one a matter of life and death. The success of Virgin Galactic's program, therefore, will ultimately depend on its pilots, high-calibre but nonetheless fallible, making the right decisions and adjustments in specific moments -- like when a yellow caution light comes on.
Alerts on the console can be triggered by any number of issues. On the July 11th flight, with Branson on board, it was a trajectory problem, or what's known as the "entry glide cone." The ship uses rocket power to get into space, but glides back to Earth and lands on a runway, like the space shuttle would do. This method, mimicking water circling a drain, enables a controlled descent. But the ship must begin its descent within a specified, imaginary "cone" to have enough glide energy to reach its destination. The pilots basically weren't flying steeply enough. Not only was the ship's trajectory endangering the mission, it was also imperiling the ship's chances of staying inside its mandated airspace.
The rocket motor on Virgin Galactic's ship is programmed to burn for a minute. On July 11th, it had a few more seconds to go when a red light also appeared on the console: an entry glide-cone warning. This was a big deal. I once sat in on a meeting, in 2015, during which the pilots on the July 11th mission -- Dave Mackay, a former Virgin Atlantic pilot and veteran of the U.K.'s Royal Air Force, and Mike Masucci, a retired Air Force pilot -- and others discussed procedures for responding to an entry glide-cone warning. C. J. Sturckow, a former marine and nasa astronaut, said that a yellow light should "scare the shit out of you," because "when it turns red it's gonna be too late." Masucci was less concerned about the yellow light but said, "Red should scare the crap out of you." Based on pilot procedures, Mackay and Masucci had basically two options: implement immediate corrective action, or abort the rocket motor. According to multiple sources in the company, the safest way to respond to the warning would have been to abort. (A Virgin Galactic spokesperson disputed this contention.)
Aborting at that moment, however, would have dashed Branson's hopes of beating his rival Bezos, whose flight was scheduled for later in the month, into space. Mackay and Masucci did not abort. Whether or not their decision was motivated by programmatic pressures and the hopes of their billionaire bankroller sitting in the back remains unclear. Virgin Galactic officials told me that the firm's top priority is the safety of its crew and passengers. Branson, however, is known for his flamboyance and showmanship. [...] Fortunately for Branson and the three other crew members in the back, the pilots got the ship into space and landed safely. But data retrieved from Flightradar24 shows the vehicle flying outside its designated airspace. An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic "deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance" and that an "investigation is ongoing." Virgin Galactic described the July 11th flight as "a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols." The statement added, "When the vehicle encountered high altitude winds which changed the trajectory, the pilots and systems monitored the trajectory to ensure it remained within mission parameters. Our pilots responded appropriately to these changing flight conditions exactly as they have been trained and in strict accordance with our established procedures."
Alerts on the console can be triggered by any number of issues. On the July 11th flight, with Branson on board, it was a trajectory problem, or what's known as the "entry glide cone." The ship uses rocket power to get into space, but glides back to Earth and lands on a runway, like the space shuttle would do. This method, mimicking water circling a drain, enables a controlled descent. But the ship must begin its descent within a specified, imaginary "cone" to have enough glide energy to reach its destination. The pilots basically weren't flying steeply enough. Not only was the ship's trajectory endangering the mission, it was also imperiling the ship's chances of staying inside its mandated airspace.
The rocket motor on Virgin Galactic's ship is programmed to burn for a minute. On July 11th, it had a few more seconds to go when a red light also appeared on the console: an entry glide-cone warning. This was a big deal. I once sat in on a meeting, in 2015, during which the pilots on the July 11th mission -- Dave Mackay, a former Virgin Atlantic pilot and veteran of the U.K.'s Royal Air Force, and Mike Masucci, a retired Air Force pilot -- and others discussed procedures for responding to an entry glide-cone warning. C. J. Sturckow, a former marine and nasa astronaut, said that a yellow light should "scare the shit out of you," because "when it turns red it's gonna be too late." Masucci was less concerned about the yellow light but said, "Red should scare the crap out of you." Based on pilot procedures, Mackay and Masucci had basically two options: implement immediate corrective action, or abort the rocket motor. According to multiple sources in the company, the safest way to respond to the warning would have been to abort. (A Virgin Galactic spokesperson disputed this contention.)
Aborting at that moment, however, would have dashed Branson's hopes of beating his rival Bezos, whose flight was scheduled for later in the month, into space. Mackay and Masucci did not abort. Whether or not their decision was motivated by programmatic pressures and the hopes of their billionaire bankroller sitting in the back remains unclear. Virgin Galactic officials told me that the firm's top priority is the safety of its crew and passengers. Branson, however, is known for his flamboyance and showmanship. [...] Fortunately for Branson and the three other crew members in the back, the pilots got the ship into space and landed safely. But data retrieved from Flightradar24 shows the vehicle flying outside its designated airspace. An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic "deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance" and that an "investigation is ongoing." Virgin Galactic described the July 11th flight as "a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols." The statement added, "When the vehicle encountered high altitude winds which changed the trajectory, the pilots and systems monitored the trajectory to ensure it remained within mission parameters. Our pilots responded appropriately to these changing flight conditions exactly as they have been trained and in strict accordance with our established procedures."
Heh (Score:2, Troll)
Did you expect anything less from a dyslexic millionaire's son? He just showed that private space travel, like his trains, should be banned.
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Let the billionaires play (Score:4, Interesting)
If billionaires want to risk their lives by flying rockets under conditions that others would deem unsafe -- okay. It's Branson's spaceship, so he gets to decide. I don't care if the light turned puce or magenta. It's his dollar, and the pilots he's paying have obviously accepted the risks. If the rocket blows up and kills all aboard -- well, that was their choice. Nobody is forced to become a crazy billionaire's rocketship pilot.
Re:Let the billionaires play (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case the aircraft veered so far off course that it was in airspace it was not supposed to be in, and could potentially have caused an collision or disrupted other traffic.
If they plan to do over 100 launches a year and other companies get in on the action then this better not become a regular thing.
Violating a clearance (Score:5, Informative)
"Airspace it was not supposed to be in" sounds like a generic reporter's interpretation of the FARs.
One way to legally violate a clearance is to declare an inflight emergency. You can get your clearance updated, real quick. Another way to do this is to report that you are unable to comply.
There are circumstances where you can choose not to comply by reporting what action you chose to do. We were told at an FAA Safety Seminar that if you are "cleared for immediate takeoff" you can reject that clearance and report "holding short." Soon afterwards, I received such a clearance and I replied "two-three Echo, holding short", and an instructor from my flight school thanked me for this later on in the break room because he was in another plane with a student that was bearing down on the runway, cleared to land.
Furthermore, above flight level 600 (60,000 ft) is uncontrolled airspace. Only Mr. Branson was up there at the time because the SR-71 has been retired from flight, I guess. When his craft descended below flight level 600 into controlled airspace, his pilot should have reported his situation.
But if the FAA is otherwise going, "Oh, noes! They violated their flight path!", it shows that have an attitude (excuse the pun) about commercial space.
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20 miles up? I doubt there's any other traffic there, although the "entry glide-cone" might be another question.
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I don't care if the light turned puce or magenta.
It would have turned purple but that meant changing the bulb.
Re:Let the billionaires play (Score:4, Interesting)
If the rocket blows up and kills all aboard -- well, that was their choice.
False. False false false. The employer has duty to create a safe work environment. They are required to ensure that their employees are trained on, and are following, the established safety standards and protocols. If you get seriously hurt, and can prove your employer didn't fulfill those duties, you're going to get to retire comfortably. (Well, you know. "Comfortable", outside the whole serious injury thing.)
I've worked in power plants for a number of years. They have systems in place to turn an extremely hazardous job into one that's relatively safe. If the procedure says "when this light turns red, do this", the operator doesn't do it, and something bad happens, the first question the investigators are going to ask is "why didn't you follow procedure". If the answer is any variation of "I didn't know that's what that light meant" or "management said it's ok to deviate" or especially "the big boss was visiting and we were pressured to make everything appear normal" you can bet that the management and company are the ones that will get a foot broken off in their ass. (Obviously the owner will be fine, as they are generally not held accountable. But that's a different topic for a different day.)
Granted, in your "everybody dies, that was their choice" scenario, nobody directly involved will have a say in the matter. Because, well, they are all dead. But you can bet your ass that the families of the dead would get very rich off Richard Branson's empire if there was any inkling that he pressured them to proceed when it was unsafe.
Reminds me of a hacking story last night (Score:2)
That reminds me of something a friend was talking about last night. My friend does penetration testing - companies hire his team to test their security by trying to hack them.
On one job, his team discovered that a large manufacturing plant had a Windows 7 box running software that controlled the pressures at various points of a system that carried a hydrocarbon at pressure through pipes around the facility. Hackers could fairly easily take over that system and set dangerously high pressures. The manager of
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The executive understood the responsibility.
Excellent, glad the executive dealt with it appropriately. I'd say "that's how it's supposed to work", but it's really not. It shouldn't have had to involve an anonymous tip and a visit from top brass, the manager should have been empowered (or properly motivated) to fix it. It's similar stories, where "small" problems like that get swept under the rug, that'll get you a starting roll in Discovery Channel's "Disaster" series.
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Yup, and letting them do this provides benefits for the rest of us. That R&D and the knowledge produced from their successes and failures leaks out and makes us all better.
I'm not saying it's a good thing that they are that rich but given they are it's better they use their money in interesting and potentially dangerous ways than for just another yacht or fancy parties.
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Please stop spreading spam and soaking up downmod points.
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So much text... (Score:2)
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So much text for something so trivial ... Looks like a pathetic clickbait.
Yes. The TL;DR version is: "High altitude winds caused the ship to stray from its planned/approved course and altitude for about a minute and a half. The pilots acted as trained to compensate." (yawn)
Any particular reason for describing it thrice? (Score:2)
Once wasn't boring enough?
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They missed the second time.
Obligatory Red Dwarf (Score:4, Funny)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
- Step up to red alert!
- Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb...
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Sure it wasn't the handbrake?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Two thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
Two: when your warning system is so bad that a yellow warning light comes on which seemingly only warns you that the red light is about to follow and red lights doom you to death, your warning system sucks. It is the equivalent of having a fuel gauge which has no needle but only three lights: green for not emply no worries, yellow for a few drops left too late to reach the next station, and red for bone dry pull to the side of the road.
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One: the story implies that a crewed flight is a "life and death" situation every time whereas a programmed flight is apparently a guarantee of safety and success. This seems like bullshit.
It may seem like bullshit to you but the reality is that computers are very good at automating highly repeatable events such as flight trajectories.
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Autoland (Score:2)
The exact opposite. We already let a computer do it when letting humans do it would be too risky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The exact opposite? Hardly. From your own link, it is used when VISIBILITY is poor, "although limitations do apply for most aircraft—for example, for a Boeing 747-400 the limitations are a maximum headwind of 25 kts, a maximum tailwind of 10 kts, a maximum crosswind component of 25 kts, and a maximum crosswind with one engine inoperative of five knots." Who has to land when those conditions are not met? A human.
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WTF do 'stratospheric hops' have to do with landing a commercial jet with autoland?
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Re: Two thoughts (Score:2)
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One: the story implies that a crewed flight is a "life and death" situation every time whereas a programmed flight is apparently a guarantee of safety and success. This seems like bullshit.
The way I understood it was that the "life and death" was only referring to test flights, i.e. flying with a crew vs. nobody onboard.
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If a flight is not crewed, how is it a matter of life and death? There are many possibilities for an unsuccessful flight that does not result in death.
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If a flight is not crewed, how is it a matter of life and death?
There are 7 billion people on the ground. If the rocket falls out of the sky, you will get a best guess as to where it will land and it could be into a major city with about 5 minutes warning.
There are many possibilities for an unsuccessful flight that does not result in death.
Such as this case.
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There are 7 billion people on the ground. If the rocket falls out of the sky, you will get a best guess as to where it will land and it could be into a major city with about 5 minutes warning.
That explains why there have been so many casualties during unmanned rocket launches in the last 60 years or so.
If an unmanned rocket has a problem with control, standard procedure is to blow it up over a safe place. They don't just let it fly until it 'falls out of the sky'. That is an unsuccessful mission that was never 'life or death'. The same is not true for crewed missions.
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That explains why there have been so many casualties during unmanned rocket launches in the last 60 years or so.
That is because almost all launch facilities are to the West of uninhabited areas. A good example is Florida, which is west of the Atlantic ocean with almost nothing west of the launch facilitates for over 3,000 miles.
If an unmanned rocket has a problem with control, standard procedure is to blow it up over a safe place.
How many safe places are between Spaceport America in New Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean? How many cities and towns are in that path? The primary reason to blow up a rocket having control failure is two fold. First, there is no one to take over and the delay makes it impossible. Second, it is a
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One: the story implies that a crewed flight is a "life and death" situation every time whereas a programmed flight is apparently a guarantee of safety and success. This seems like bullshit.
Your illiteracy doesn't make it bullshit; the implication was that every crewed flight is a chance to kill someone onboard, whereas an unmanned flight isn't.
Two: when your warning system is so bad that a yellow warning light comes on which seemingly only warns you that the red light is about to follow and red lights doom you to death, your warning system sucks.
The light came on because they were off course, nothing about the article stated or suggested that no other instruments reflected this fact as well.
Your post gets 0/5 stars for accuracy
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when your warning system is so bad that a yellow warning light comes on which seemingly only warns you that the red light is about to follow and red lights doom you to death, your warning system sucks
That is not how it works. Even the scaremongering author of the article admits this:
If they didn't fix it, they risked a perilous emergency landing in the desert on their descent
The amber warning light is a warning that the attitude of the craft is wrong and following the wrong path. When it comes on, there are two choices: Fix the trajectory or Abort the launch.
Now, let's look at how monitoring has worked at every company I have worked at over the last 30 years. When a systems if running abnormally, an indicator on the "sea of green" board turns yellow. The proper person (usually) gets notified
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It is the equivalent of having a fuel gauge which has no needle
No one said anything about no needle. You made that up because you don't understand that these warning lights are just that, a warning that you're doing something while reading the other instruments.
By the way have you ever run out of petrol before? You car works identically. A fuel gauge shows you when fuel gets low. A warning light comes on when it gets really low. When you run out of fuel, your check engine light comes on to tell you you've done fucked up.
Glider landing trick to reach runway (Score:2)
Since they were landing in a desert they could have tried flying very low in ground effect if it looked like they weren't going to reach the runway. Here's a video where a glider uses ground effect to prevent it landing short of the runway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The energy to overcome drag needs to come from somewhere. If you have no working engine and you already expended all the potential energy from altitude, the only thing left is kinetic energy, which basically means that you will slow down until you stall.
I also suspect that their plane has more drag and a lower glide ratio than a glider.
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Yes, but in ground effect the effect of the air compression between the ground and the wing reduces the angle of attack you need for X lift a given speed, which in turn reduces your induced drag.
Just a way to eke a bit more distance out.
Re: Glider landing trick to reach runway (Score:2)
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This is a vehicle that is designed to acceelate quickly by rocket, fly at hypersonic velocities, be able to stably re-enter the atmosphere, then is required to change its aerodynamic configuration so that it can glide at all. It is one of the most demanding aerodynamic design problems ever attempted (which makes it dubious why this is was a good idea for a pleasure craft). Expecting it to also be optimized for ground effect landing is expecting a bit much.
As with the dancing bear, it is not how well it glid
But is it hypersonic? (Score:2)
The X-15 was hypersonic, but Spaceship 2 is a lot slower?
I thought that was the whole point of the design in Rutan's "feather" reentry, that it is not hypersonic and doesn't need heavy heat shielding or heat-resistant structures.
Re: Glider landing trick to reach runway (Score:2)
He didn't beat his rival. (Score:2)
His rival went to an internationally recognised height denoting where space begins. He went to a height that and the US armed forces care about and that NASA eventually after relenting to the armed forces also recognised. As a Brit he failed to get to space. Only in America did he get a participation award, and saying he "beat his rival" is a celebration of mediocrity.
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His rival went to an internationally recognised height denoting where space begins. He went to a height that and the US armed forces care about and that NASA eventually after relenting to the armed forces also recognised. As a Brit he failed to get to space. Only in America did he get a participation award, and saying he "beat his rival" is a celebration of mediocrity.
Hey I didn't know Jeff Bezos had a /. account!
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Hey I didn't know Jeff Bezos had a /. account!
Why would Bezos have a Slashdot account? And why do you think he would care?
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My name's not Jeff. Oh dear. Did you think I was Jeff Bezos? I honestly don't understand how you came to that conclusion. Do you think a CEO would discuss the technical merits of the Kármán line on some news for nerds website?
Anyway your post is stupid. If you want to actually pretend to be a news for nerd, rather than claiming someone shills for people they couldn't give a shit about, why not enter into a meaningful discussion about the relevance of the Kármán line. Common kiddo, earn y
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Maybe try reading the whole summary.
Civility (Score:2)
pass it on.
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Uh, no. Read the summary. The FIRST light that came on was yellow, saying there was a problem with a shallow flight path. This was not a critical problem. The SECOND light that came on was an 'entry glide cone problem'. This problem was critical.
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"If the flight itself was a light, it would be red."
Got it?
Fearmongering from the New Yorker (Score:2)
The author who has zero experience with piloting and flight operations. He believes that an amber light means "ABORT!!!! ABORT NOW!!!" rather than what it actually means: "Hey, this thing may have a problem and you should take a look and take appropriate action."
Schmidle seems to have a thing for Branson, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX. He has written several articles and a book about commercial space flight. This quote from his book "Test Go
Console needs another feature (Score:2)
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The Far Side: https://i.pinimg.com/originals... [pinimg.com]
Branson (Score:2)
Branson, Manson, Danson. How many can dance on the head of a pin?
my club, sword, tower, gun, rocket is bigger! (Score:1)
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Engineering On This Always Seemed Sketchy (Score:3)
By "engineering" I mean design and execution including quality control.
This is a very complex scheme for an entertainment ride, with multiple flight regimes and transitions each with unique risks. Aerial release, rocket motor ignition that must be precisely timed, powerfully boosted hypersonic flight and climb, atmospheric re-entry, reconfiguration of the flight surfaces to allow it to glide, then a runway landing.
The challenge to this may not be obvious, I mean how critical could something like when to ignite the rocket motor be? Sufficiently critical that it killed the first test pilot and destroyed the plane when he did it too soon. This complex flight scenario has many moments when things must go exactly right or death results.
Then there is the engineering management of developing and building this whole scheme. The first flight after the long deadly crash hiatus, which was hailed as a huge success when the rocket ignited at the right time and the plane returned turned out to be a near disaster when inspected on the ground afterward and one of the mechanisms came close to jamming because of loose machining chips present (that quality control thing). Then there was the deadly explosion on the ground (two killed) when they were experimenting with different rocket designs. The development schedule of this (stretching over 16 years) has been bedeviled with delays that seem to relate to haphazard project management.
And then there is the question why a pilot is even needed. The "pilot requirement" seems to be designed in, it was assumed that there must be a guy to fly it, and this assumption conditioned all the engineering. Why was that rocket not always automatically triggered so the proper time (or actually speed) condition would be met? Normally when precise timing and sequencing is needed we build machines to do it reliably, repeatedly, accurately.
Now I agree that anything that is going to be carrying passengers is going to need a pilot for marketing reasons, no (rich) passenger will want to feel like "spam in a can" - they will always demand a pilot. And given a pilot, that person should do something valuable - which would be to "take over" in the very unlikely case that the control system for the pre-programmed flight trajectory control system failed or perhaps just for the landing so that that is not automated (though it should be). But designing the system so that the pilot has to do things to make it a successful flight almost, but not quite, to internationally recognized-space would be an accident waiting to happen, except that it already did.
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Elon pointed out that if you're flying people, you can't iterate quickly enough as the cost of failures is too high.
If your system must have humans on board and in the way of hazard, you must be too risk averse to achieve
Was it too early to put civilians on this flight ? (Score:2)
"[Branson] sitting in the back remains unclear" (Score:2)
Dreaded ATC transmission (Score:1)
wind (Score:2)
Can someone answer a technical question: IIUC, they were 20 miles up when this happened. What kind of wind do you have at 100,000 feet (30,000 meters)? I suppose you might have fast winds, but are they strong enough (is the air density high enough) that they could push a plane traveling at Mach 2 off course? Barometric pressure at that altitude is 1/100th that at sea level (https://www.sensorsone.com/altitude-pressure-units-conversion/), so I would think a given wind speed would have 1/100th the strength