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 The premature unlocking of the hinged tail section on Virgin
Galactic's SpaceShipTwo triggered a midair breakup of the ship
during its fourth powered test flight on Oct. 31, the National
Transportation Safety Board said.
Blame for the accident falls to Scaled Composites, the Northrop
Grumman unit that developed the craft and employed its test crew,
the NTSB said.
The accident was a setback in billionaire entreprenuer Richard
Branson's more than decade-old quest to ferry space tourists beyond
Earth's atmosphere.
"Scaled did not consider that a pilot would induce that kind of
failure," said lead investigator Lorenda Ward.
The NTSB also faulted the Federal Aviation Administration, which
oversees commercial spaceflight in the United States and approved
the test flight, for failing to recognize the potential danger.
Scaled provided inadequate training to co-pilot Michael Alsbury, who
unlocked the tail section, and pilot Peter Siebold, and the other
members of SpaceShipTwo's flight crews and engineering staff over
the past 10 years, the NTSB said during a webcast hearing in
Washington, D.C.
Scaled should have trained its pilots to understand what could
happen to the craft when the tail section was unlocked prematurely,
before atmospheric forces built up to hold it into place, the board
said.
"Scaled will incorporate learning from this accident into its flight
procedure review and safety assessment in future projects," Scaled
Composites said in a statement posted on NTSB's website after the
hearing.
"Scaled will expand the documentation of training and testing
further to promote safety, including with emphasis on the challenges
inherent in rocket flight," the statement added.
Scaled designed and built the two-pilot, six-passenger vehicle for
Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Branson's London-based Virgin Group.
The craft was the first of a planned fleet of five vehicles that
Virgin eventually expects to use to fly passengers on short,
suborbital flights into space at altitudes of about 62 miles (100
km). It has already sold about 700 tickets for rides that cost
$250,000 each.
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Test flights of Virgin Galactic's new ship are scheduled to begin
before the end of the year.
The Spaceship Company, a Virgin-owned operation based in Mojave, has
taken over construction of SpaceShipTwo vehicles from Scaled, a
transition that began before last year’s accident.
Alsbury, 39, an experienced test pilot, died in the accident, while
Siebold, 43, managed to parachute to safety. Both pilots worked for
Scaled Composites.
The tail section of the SpaceShipTwo vehicle is designed to rotate
to allow the craft to re-enter the atmosphere with its heat-shielded
belly down, regardless of its original orientation.
The tail is intended to be unlocked by one of the pilots after the
ship is supersonic, traveling at about Mach 1.4, or 1.4 times the
speed of sound. Alsbury unlocked the tail section when the spaceship
was traveling at less than Mach 1.
Virgin's spaceships will now include a mechanism to prevent pilots
from unlocking tail sections too early, the company said.
While Scaled flew under an experimental flight permit, Virgin
Galactic will need full FAA licensing before the start of commercial
passenger spaceflight services.
(Editing by Frank McGurty and Tom Brown)
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