Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes

[kham]

From Space.com

Missed posting this yesterday

Way too early for any idea what went wrong. They were testing a new engine/fuel blend , and one report I saw on Twitter before contradicts some of this article. From that, it said the rocket exploded on ignition. Again, too early to say. But the vehicle was intact until impact, so that "broke up" bit sounds bullshit

[BSink42]

Yeah, it's early yet, so there's going to be a lot of conflicting information, but yeah it does seem the 'explode upon ignition' isn't accurate.

My heart goes out to the pilots and their families, especially the family of the one that died.

[Mynock]

Looks like something went bang hard enough to knock both the wings off and then the fuselage dropped out of the sky.....amazing one of the guys actually survived.

spaceshiptwo-crash.jpg

Pic from this article:
http://mashable.com/2014/10/31/virgin-g ... ektl;erkte

[kham]

Seperation looks clean, so that explode on ignition stuff is clearly bullshit. The third image there it looks to be tumbling, with the engine -end facing forward? Considering there were no ejection systems, they are lucky anyone got out, never mind lived

[Mynock]

I don't think the rocket motor actually ignites right away, they probably give it a few seconds to get clear of the carrier plane, so it could've separated just fine but then blown up when they tried to light the rocket. Looking at that pic again yea I'd agree it does actually look like it's flying backward or tumbling.

[kham]

Look at the exhaust shockwaves in the 2nd image; they look very normal, the diamond-shapes you'd expect in a clean burn. Whatever went wrong must have been abrupt, and terminal

[nachtjaeger]

My condolences to Michael Alsbury's friends and family, and wishing Peter Siebold a speedy recovery.

ust guessing here, like I did on 9/11, but I would suspect a crack in the fuel. These are hybrid rocket engines- solid fuel, but a separate oxidizer. I think the first one used rubber cement and Nitrous Oxide (NO2). Supposed to be the safest ever designed- safe components, and they can be throttled, shut down, and restarted. However, I seem to recall one of these engines failing under static test and killing some of the employees. Perhaps this fuel mix was designed to prevent that. Wondering if it wasn't too rigid, and when subjected to the thermal and mechanical stresses of flight at low temperatures, it cracked. Cracks would make way too much surface area, and when the oxidizer hits them, I would guess the energy widens the cracks, which makes more surface area, which accelerates the reaction, etc. etc.

NASA, and now private space launch companies, have been having a TON of accidents lately. I imagine the Tinfoil Hat crowd will be calling "Sabotage!" and "Conspiracy!" in short order. Although in the words of Gen. William Tecumseh "Uncle Billy" Sherman, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action." It would be damned easy to sneak a chunk of some sort of explosive into the fuel when it was cast, or when the motor was assembled. This happened right on the heels of the failure of an unmanned Orbital Sciences 'Antares' rocket last Tuesday. If the US space program crashes and burns, we'll still be stuck paying the Russians to launch stuff for us. Wait- a Russian 'Proton' class booster suffered a first-stage failure in July of last year- breaking a 30 year stretch without a first-stage failure. But they seem to have fixed that- they're flying them again on the ISS resupply missions, and they're launching 'Soyuz' class heavy boosters like they're going out of style. We need Brad Meltzer, Jesse Ventura, Richard Belzer, and Dr. Jim Fetzer to look into this. Hey, most of those guys have "zer" in their names. Coincidence? I think not!

Look at the exhaust shockwaves in the 2nd image; they look very normal, the diamond-shapes you'd expect in a clean burn. Whatever went wrong must have been abrupt, and terminal

[Mynock]

Nah. Chalk them both up to "shit happens". Chemical rockets are just crazy complicated and prone to failure. Need to put more money into Ion/Plasma drive research. Stop carrying the equivalent of a small nuclear bomb's worth of fuel around and they'll stop blowing up.

[kham]

What you said Myn; the Antares failure looked like a normal 60s era one. Normal ignition then one motor failed/blew; followed by the inevitable effects of gravity. If they spent more money on exotic propulsion systems to try and get a higher ISP than LOX, we'd be onto something. Antimatter rockets for one (no, really - the trick is getting enough antimatter to use; and amazingly enough, there's a source even in our own solar system...)

[Mynock]

Yup. The Antares that blew up carried 750,000lbs of fuel/oxidizer to achieve orbit. Not to go anywhere, just to get up in the air basically. An antimatter rocket would use few GRAMS of fuel to get to Mars. There's other hurdles to clear but if you want to get somewhere other then earth orbit the first thing needed is a propulsion system that doesn't eat gas like the fat guy at the movies eats popcorn.