Yep, it crashed. No, it will not buff right out.

If the wright bro were around today they would not be able to get permits to try.
I truly doubt that the NTSB should be there at all.
Its just an other fat bloated pig .
I am going to guess the engineers have already come up with the answer.
But Govt will spend millions drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and advocating some stupid law.
With the set back i am sure much will be gathered for the future..
Lessons are sometimes learned the hardest way.
It is a sad deal. But in the end a great future!

Actually the NTSB does a pretty damn good job. The last thing anyone wants is the FAA having accident investigative responsibility. The FAA is a regulatory enforcement agency. If we gave them investigative responsibility all it would do is open the door for them to go on witch hunts / fishing expeditions to nail people for all manner of stupid violations and encourage pilots, controllers, etc. to spend more time covering their respective asses than cooperating with investigations. It'd be an utterly stupid idea.

One of the best programs in the aviation world is the ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting System) program - it collects lots of good data directly from pilots, controllers, crew members, etc. about things they experience in the real world whether or not they result in accidents or incidents. This is done in exchange for giving the reporter a "get out of jail free" card that indemnifies them from any violation / certificate action for that incident that happens to get pursued by the FAA. The whole reason the program succeeds is that it's administered by NASA and specifically NOT the FAA. There is no way any pilot would ever admit "hey we were distracted by such-and-such which caused us to bust our altitude by 200'" or whatever to the FAA because the FAA would immediately go after the pilot's license as an enforcement responsibility. NASA however can collect that information, de-identify it and pass on the aggregate recommendations to the FAA for regulatory changes that will make the system safer (e.g. "lots of pilots are being distracted by such-and-such so perhaps a change in procedure is warranted to help prevent it".

As with all federal government programs there's a certain amount of bloat / excess / fat but all in all I have no issue whatsoever with the NTSB being in charge of investigations. Back in my flying days I was always happy to talk to an NTSB investigator, never to an FAA inspector - the former people are there to collect information to make a system better. The latter are just looking for ways to screw you or your company, issue violations and justify their own existences.

This venture may be a bridge too far.

Nah.

Perhaps a bridge too dangerous or too expensive (pick one)

SS1 made it a couple times with one pilot.

And, of course, the many space men of decades past hwho have gone much further.

A Ramble on materials: rocketplanes of the past used super high-end metal alloys (Inconel, Titainium..) Here, Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, has had lots of success with composites for regular planes ... but does this scale well to the brutal environment of Maching into the mesosphere? Are composites the best choice here? ... or simply the old adage of When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail. ?

I will note that CF has some great structural stability handling sharp thermal gradients, but.... seems, at best, they are not using enough of it.

CF is more resistant to flutter for one thing, and you can insulate it with carbon-carbon like the shuttle if you want to withstand reentry, but I don't think this thing is flying nearly as fast as the X-15 or shuttle to the point where the compression heating requires Inconel or C-C. The cold of space may make the resin super brittle but a little insulation would fix that I would think, you really only have radiation heat transfer up there.

Thankyou!

Unfortunately to me, it looks like
 

The ship wasn't stable when the engines lit! Kind of like an arrow oscillating in flight trying to find straight. Just ripped itself apart, not being in the best trim aerodynamically. Edwards would have had all of the high end camera footage on it. I hope they will share it to help the group!!

It would be better if it had been an engine! Because what I think will be a bigger setback. I was up at willow Springs for the races when it happened. Drove thru the airport on Sunday morning (early) and it was a ghost town, with only one NBC truck there!

RIP

Thanx for the correction. sincerely :)

Spaceship 'feathering' mechanism moved early, preliminary findin - NBC12 - Richmond, VA News

Very interesting.

How did the pilot survive? Did he ride it to the ground, or do they have an ejection system?

I edited this sentence for you: "As with all federal government programs there's a certain amount of bloat / excess / fat / corruption of power / arrogance and general stupidity..."

Otherwise very well said. As a professional pilot I deal with FAA folks often and most just want a ride--a free ride somewhere. They do this under the guise of "line checks" and sit in the cockpit jumpseat and watch the show. Some are really good people and know the airplane and in rare cases are former airline pilots. Many are ex-military flyers who could not get hired or didn't want the airline career. That type can go either way on the good guy / bad guy scale. Again, 99% of them are just trying to get somewhere for free--a daughter's wedding, Hawaii, fishing trip with the guys, etc. and will quietly sit there and watch. Rarely do we get a type-qualified guy who really knows the jet. They all know 250 KIAS max below 10,000 feet so don't go 251 or he'll note that. Best Fed I ever had in the jump was a former United 767 captain and it was my ETOPS checkout flight from Hawaii to the west coast. Great guy and showed me (us--captain was new to ETOPS too) some tips for over-water flying. He had been a Navy F-8 Crusader guy in Vietnam so when he said that I knew he was good people. Anyway, FAA usually means not helpful.

The media are a bit rough on Virgin Galactic, I think it's mostly because they love to hate Richard Branson... Fair enough, but we tend to forget "test pilot" is the ultimate cowboy profession, there is an expectation of danger. We killed many developing prop planes, jet planes, supersonic planes.... and the space program did kill a few people too, did it not ?

On the one hand we cut funds to the pros at NASA, and farm this out to private endeavors, then we slap those guys on the wrist when something happens??? Really, didn't anyone see this coming (one week after antares blew up). Unless there was gross negligence on their part, which I doubt given the people involved, what are they to do ? They are pioneers of a new way of doing things, it'll never be risk free!

I hope they fix the problem and go on.... And I wish we'd give NASA all the money we're giving Irak and Afghanistan, among others...

Remember, the Wright brothers nearly killed themselves several times as they perfected their early planes. And 11 army pilots died while using Wright Flyers.

I know what your saying, for low freq's, but what's the ringing driver of shockwaves over that thing? --I don't know; just the empirical observation that it ripped apart nose first.

+1

Plus, if the military or NASA killed you there was a military pension and/or survivor benefits. When some private company kills you it's probably tough s h i t for your surviving family. Mr. Branson's attorneys are undoubtedly soothing the wife of the dead pilot as we speak. "There, there, PLEASE don't sue."

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People are questioning the ego driven efforts for joy rides into almost space.

Also of note, is that this is 2014. We are in a time when communications are high, and robotics are ubiquitous. – We've been driving a rover around on Mars for how many years now? (Read: A computer could fly the thing for testing)

This effort strikes me as a bit of a re-creation of "The Right Stuff" of yesteryear. And yet, from a technical standpoint, there is no new achievement here.