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Post by swamprat on Oct 31, 2014 12:58:22 GMT -6
SpaceShipTwo a 'loss' after anomaly during test flight By Jason Hanna, CNN updated 2:52 PM EDT, Fri October 31, 2014
A "serious anomaly" resulted in the "loss" of SpaceShipTwo during a test flight Friday, and the status of the pilots isn't known, Virgin Galactic said on Twitter.
"We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident," the company said on Twitter.
www.cnn.com/2014/10/31/us/spaceshiptwo-incident/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2014 17:28:19 GMT -6
Terrible that the pilot died
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Post by skywalker on Oct 31, 2014 20:14:24 GMT -6
The other pilot isn't doing too good either. He's hurt pretty bad. They still don't seem to have a clue what happened either.
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Post by plutronus on Nov 1, 2014 7:29:17 GMT -6
SpaceShipTwo a 'loss' after anomaly during test flight By Jason Hanna, CNN updated 2:52 PM EDT, Fri October 31, 2014
A "serious anomaly" resulted in the "loss" of SpaceShipTwo during a test flight Friday, and the status of the pilots isn't known, Virgin Galactic said on Twitter.
"We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident," the company said on Twitter.
www.cnn.com/2014/10/31/us/spaceshiptwo-incident/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Yeah...it was right around 10:00am here in my neck of the woods, everybody in the neighborhood heard a loud bang. It was big, the sound reverberated like a drum-skin off both ends of the Valley's mountains. Seven miles distance, up in the west side mountains (Valley is encircled on three sides by mountain ranges, part of the Long-Valley Caldera), up in the west-side mountains was located the Rocketdyne Test Facility (I've changed the name for security). This facility is where Rocketdyne tested their rocket motors/engines over the past 60 years. On a few occasions during test-stand mounted rocket-engine firing tests, these engines would go 'bang'....explode, having almost a metallic 'twangy' kind of sound, showering the mountain sides with big balls of molten metal alloys, rolling around on the ground like VW bug-car sized blobs of molten solder. Once one hears/experiences a rocket engine explode....the sound is unmistakable, once you hear it you know what it is. Well that's the sound we all heard here in the Valley. It was a twang-bang,way off someplace (Mojave is ~50 miles from my place as the crow flies). (ps, Mojave is pronounced 'Moh-Hah-Vee', its an American Indian word) Ok, here's what's not being said in the American suppressed news (as usual). SpaceShip-II (SS2), was carried aloft by WhiteKnite-II (WK2), the carrier craft successfully undocked with the space-plane at 9:56 AM PDT, four minutes later after gliding a bit, the 'flex' motor was started. The first anomally was reported (via sensors & telemetry) as exhibiting a 'hard-start'. The rocket-motor didn't fire immediately and when it did ignite, the fuel mixture wasn't burning evenly. Reports say that it was a "new experimental fuel-mix which had been previously and exhaustively tested prior to the test-flight." The engine was 'sputtering'. One can see that anomally in the videos as being the black Diesel appearing sooty like smoke in the exhaust plume. After about 1.5 sec the engine began to run smoothly and then it exploded at 2.3 seconds after engine start. The explosion sheared off the two vertical tail nacels (one nacel on each side) causing the vehicle to begin a very violent vertical spiral spin. That video is now being suppressed here in California. The pilot successfully ejected & parachuted out, (in videos on Aljezeera News) one can see the red parachute cloth laying on the desert floor enclosed within a large yellow 'do not cross' tape line. The pilot was seriously wounded during the engine explosion. Its not clear if the co-pilot died as a direct result of the engine explosion or if he was unable to eject due to ejection system malfunction and was killed by the vehicle fuselage impact with the desert floor? The pilot was picked up and flown to a Lancaster Ca hospital by a LA County Fire-Dept Rescue Helicopter. It was the California Highway Patrol that found him a short distance from the Sierra Hwy near the CA-14. The news spin-doctors are describing the test-flight malfunction as being a "space-plane crash", but in reality it was a space-vehicle explosion as the vehicle broke-up into multiple small peices leaving little of the vehicle intact to land. NASA didn't describe the STS-51L Challenger "anomally" as being a space-plane crash, because it blew-up and there was nothing left to land. The co-pilot was found strapped into his seat inside the fuselage wreckage on the desert floor. Word on the street says that the body has as yet to be removed; they are apparently awaiting for the NTSB investigators to arrive. California is suffering a severe drought, but it rained last night, here and in the Mojave area. Sad day.
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Post by skywalker on Nov 1, 2014 21:17:25 GMT -6
Are they suspecting that the new fuel mixture was the culprit? I know it's too early to know for sure, if we ever even do. It's kind of weird that two rockets would blow up in the same week. If I was a conspiracy theorist I might be suspecting sabotage. Of course those things explode a lot more often than people suspect...
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Post by plutronus on Nov 2, 2014 18:20:22 GMT -6
Are they suspecting that the new fuel mixture was the culprit? I know it's too early to know for sure, if we ever even do. It's kind of weird that two rockets would blow up in the same week. If I was a conspiracy theorist I might be suspecting sabotage. (:)) Of course those things explode a lot more often than people suspect... >Are they suspecting that the new fuel mixture was the culprit? It was the engine that blewup, the explosion destroyed the vehicle. So yep, somewhere in the mix the fuel was at fault. :)) plutronus
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Post by plutronus on Nov 6, 2014 4:22:14 GMT -6
Are they suspecting that the new fuel mixture was the culprit? I know it's too early to know for sure, if we ever even do. It's kind of weird that two rockets would blow up in the same week. If I was a conspiracy theorist I might be suspecting sabotage. (:)) Of course those things explode a lot more often than people suspect... SkyWalker, There have been local reports (National as well?) that the vehicle's twin-nacelle(sp?)/vertical-stabilizer/wing was prematurely 'canted'....tilted into the ascent position some four minutes before it was planned for the canting. Observers on the ground said that (this info was correlated by video camera time-stamps on the frames) that the vehicle appeared to begin to break-up prior to the explosion. There were also reports of engine 'hard-start', it did not fire immediately. So only time will tell what actually did happen. Maybe the breakup caused the engine to explode? Rather than vice-versa? plutronus
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Post by skywalker on Nov 8, 2014 8:07:11 GMT -6
I don't see why having the stabilizer in the wrong position would cause the plane to break up. That doesn't explain why the thing wouldn't start either. Perhaps it was damaged somehow, like maybe when it was separating from the plane that took it up in the air. Or perhaps it was a combination of mechanical damage and the new fuel mixture. There are all kinds of possibilities. I wonder if we will ever find out.
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