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Space

Virgin Galactic Flights Grounded After New Yorker Story On Branson Spaceflight (bbc.com) 39

Posted by BeauHD from the put-on-hold dept.
"The US Federal Aviation Administration has grounded Virgin Galactic flights as it investigates how Sir Richard Branson's recent space flight drifted off course during its climb skyward," reports the BBC. The New Yorker first broke the news about Branson's flight veering off course in a piece published yesterday. Virgin Galactic has strongly disputed the article. From the BBC: The rocket plane Unity which carried Sir Richard into space landed safely and Virgin Galactic says it is co-operating with the FAA. In a short statement, the FAA said it was overseeing the Virgin Galactic investigation of its "July 11 SpaceShipTwo mishap that occurred over Spaceport America, New Mexico." "Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety," it added. In its statement issued before the FAA announcement, Virgin Galactic spoke of "misleading characterizations and conclusions" in the New Yorker article and vowed to push ahead with its flight program.

Thursday saw it announce details of its next mission -- a research flight for the Italian Air Force. This was likely to be conducted at the end of September or in early October, a Virgin Galactic spokesperson told BBC News. And it now looks like the Unity's next mission is to be put on hold. [...] This is meant to take aloft three Italian nationals - Walter Villadei and Angelo Landolfi from the Italian Air Force; and Pantaleone Carlucci, an Italian national research council engineer. The three men plan to conduct 13 experiments during the flight, and in particular during those few minutes of weightlessness they'll experience at the top of Unity's climb.

Under the plan, the Italians are to be supervised in the back of the rocket plane by Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor, Beth Moses. If and when it happens, it will be her third mission to the edge of space. After this mission, Virgin Galactic is expected to enter an extended period of maintenance and upgrades for both Unity and its carrier/launch plane, known as Eve. If the schedule is not disrupted by the latest FAA ban, these vehicles are expected to resume space missions by the middle of next year. The company said one further test outing would be conducted before full commercial service began, probably in the second half of 2022. Some 600 individuals put down deposits a number of years ago to buy seat tickets costing $200,000-250,000. Tickets sales resumed last month with prices from $450,000 per seat.
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Virgin Galactic Flights Grounded After New Yorker Story On Branson Spaceflight More

Virgin Galactic Flights Grounded After New Yorker Story On Branson Spaceflight

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  • Journalism (Score:5, Funny)

    by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @08:39PM (#61758405)

    This article reminds me why I hate "journalism." There's one paragraph of information in 15 paragraphs of fluff and hit piece shit. "A yellow light came on. Branson is no stranger to controversy. I wrote a book about it. In that book I talk about how Branson is no stranger to controversy. The light was red now. Branson once made a mistake. I wrote about it in this other article. In that article I talked about how Branson is motivated by competition. I'm guessing that the lights were yellow and red. This is based on publicly accessible flight radar. Virgin Galactic says the investigation is ongoing. We'll see how Branson's ego deals with this one."

    • Probably Bezos driven out of bitterness,
    • I noticed you used quotes, but if you actually authored that, well, there's a cushy job available for you at The New Yorker if you can write with such clarity on demand.

    • Re:Journalism (Score:5, Informative)

      by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @09:57PM (#61758497)
      Since the flight was above 18,000', they were in controlled (class A) airspace. If they did not follow their allowed range of trajectories, they were in violation of whatever clearance gave them permission to fly there. That doesn't necessarily mean that they were at "fault" but an investigation is warranted.
      • They would've been in controlled airspace as soon as they climbed past 700 AGL. Class E is controlled (and starts again above class A at 60,000') though I don't know if they picked up their clearance on the ground or in the air. In any event it sounds like they deviated from an ATC clearance which is a pretty cut-and-dry violation.
        • Yes, I should have been more explicit. In some controlled airspace (like E) a clearance is not required but in class A (above FL180) as far as I know a clearance is always required. Rockets generally get their own restricted airspace for the launch but they are not allowed to stray outside of that allowed airspace.

      • Indeed it is. But I wonder if the FAA was just sitting around reading the New Yorker waiting for a story about yellow and red lights.

        • There may have already been a quiet investigation going on, but the FAA had to comment when the news media picked it up
    • Nicely put. This is precisely what has always put me off those classic journalistic style articles. Then there's the misuse of statistics, either to infer something more dramatic or because they just haven't made the effort to understand what the data actually means.
    • I'm still trying to figure out why the article prompted the FAA to do anything given that they could see the whole thing unfold, and they hadn't thought it was something that should earn Virgin a grounding.

      • It probably didn't prompt the FAA to do anything, and it's just the news media jacking itself off to try and convince people that their hard-hitting journalism affected change.

    • If only i could upvote this moreâ¦

  • Headline Fail (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @09:01PM (#61758413)

    The slashdot headline says, "Virgin Galactic Flights Grounded After New Yorker Story On Branson Spaceflight." Fail.

    The New Yorker was the first to report that the flight had drifted off course. However, the story does not suggest, (and it would be absurd to think) that the FAA learned of the problem from the New Yorker. I mean, come on.

    You don't just fly up to high altitude (almost to space!) unmonitored and without sending mission reports to the FAA afterwards. It appears from the story that they were off course early, and normally would have aborted; but didn't. WIth Sir Branson the Late sitting behind them, somebody made the decision to continue with the mission. It appears to be a flagrant, willful violation of their mission authorization; by a foreigner, no less. I'll be surprised if they're cleared to fly again any time soon.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by HanzoSpam ( 713251 )

      The New Yorker was the first to report that the flight had drifted off course. However, the story does not suggest, (and it would be absurd to think) that the FAA learned of the problem from the New Yorker. I mean, come on.

      I can go along with that. Nobody actually reads the New Yorker, they just buy it to leave on their coffee table. If the information had actually been in there, it would have been years before the FAA ever caught wind of it.

    • The New Yorker was the first to report that the flight had drifted off course. However, the story does not suggest, (and it would be absurd to think) that the FAA learned of the problem from the New Yorker. I mean, come on.

      You don't just fly up to high altitude (almost to space!) unmonitored and without sending mission reports to the FAA afterwards.

      There were two FAA personnel in mission control watching over the whole thing. FAA knew about this the whole time and it was a non issue. It later being misclassified as a 'mishap' in response to an article smells like politics.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It's not clear to me whether it *should* have been a non-issue. But I agree the reclassification sounds like politics, it's just that I suspect the original classification was also modified by politics. I'm not informed in this area, so I could well be wrong, and I have no certainty. But I do have suspicions.

      • Deviating from the approved flight area is absolutely a major thing, which is why they are grounded and probably will have to cancel their next (only?) scheduled mission.

        That the FAA had people in mission control just means they knew about it. Those people are probably not the same people who decide if it is "big deal," and the decision to ignore the rules was made in the air, not on the ground. They were there, but they were not in charge of the craft, or the of the communication with the craft.

        That you

      • I wouldn't be shocked if the FAA learned of this from the New Yorker - the staff writers there are generally much smarter than most of those who work at the FAA

        Articles at the New Yorker have been the cause of numerous investigations by law enforcement (e.g., Harvey Weinstein)

  • I would argue whatever minor blowback this is, is totally worth Branson doing what he was publicizing he was going to do.

    They'll probably investigate for a few months, a few millions of dollars will mysteriously slow somewhere it was not, and the story shall fade away...

    It's not like a poor person went off course in a homemade rocket or whatever, it was a ultra-rich person so it's cool.

  • not even space (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @09:55PM (#61758495) Homepage
    Come on. Who are they kidding? Pluto isn't a planet. Subway isn't a sandwich. Sub-orbital isn't space. Once the FAA comes to its senses and admits this we can finish with the pissing contest.

  • "Mishap?" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G-Man ( 79561 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @11:27PM (#61758593)

    https://www.faa.gov/documentLi... [faa.gov]

    Chapter 11. Commercial Space Mishap Notification, Response, and Investigation Section 1. General

    "3. Definitions.
    a. Mishap. Mishap means a launch or reentry accident, launch or reentry incident, launch site accident, failure to complete a launch or reentry as planned, or an unplanned event or series of events resulting in a fatality or serious injury (as defined in Title 49 CFR 830.2), or resulting in greater than $25,000 worth of damage to a payload, a launch or reentry vehicle, a launch or reentry support facility or government property located on the launch or reentry site."

    Who was killed? Who was seriously injured? Was there greater than $25K of misgendering or failure to use self-identified pronouns?

    If they went off-course, that's called busting airspace. It's not a 'mishap'.

    God, we live in a fucking Banana Republic now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by G-Man ( 79561 )

      Sorry, wrong link. Correct one:
      https://www.faa.gov/documentli... [faa.gov]

    • Re:"Mishap?" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by robbak ( 775424 ) on Friday September 03, 2021 @12:39AM (#61758707) Homepage
      Yes - seems this should be classified as a 'Human Space Flight Incident. Human space flight incident means an unplanned event that poses a high risk of causing a serious or fatal injury to a space flight participant or crew', according to that document.

      But this is just the FAA issuing a short statement isn't using the term according to the dictates of that document. It is 11 years old, and definitions can change over much shorter timeframes as that.
      • Which is a bad thing. Definitions need to remain fairly consistent for communication to be possible, and when it comes to laws and regulations they must be very strictly consistent or obeying them becomes impossible. Come to think of it, so does ensuring their constitutionality. Sadly, politicians realized that meaning often gets in the way of what they want.
    • I think you are reading your own text wrong. A launch or reentry incident requires notification. So does an unplanned series of events causing $25k or more of damage. Its not saying that only reentry incidents that cause $25k of damage need to be reported.

      • Yeah, I think they are using this part of the definition:

        failure to complete a launch or reentry as planned, or

        they exceeded their planned launch and reentry zones, sounds like it did not complete as planned to me.

    • It fits the definition nicely. "3. Definitions. a. Mishap. Mishap means a launch or reentry accident, launch or reentry incident, launch site accident, failure to complete a launch or reentry as planned" The rest follows the 'or' statement : ", or an unplanned event (or series of events) resulting in a fatality or serious injury" If you break it up that way, it certainly should be investigated.

  • Why should any FAA investigation into this take weeks or months to complete?

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