The Red Warning Light on Richard Branson's Space Flight

[Zorro]

The F.A.A. is investigating the ship’s off-course descent.

On July 11th, nearly a minute into the rocket trip carrying Richard Branson, the British billionaire, to space, a yellow caution light appeared on the ship’s console. The craft was about twenty miles in the air above the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, and climbing, travelling more than twice the speed of sound. But it was veering off course, and the light was a warning to the pilots that their flight path was too shallow and the nose of the ship was insufficiently vertical. If they didn’t fix it, they risked a perilous emergency landing in the desert on their descent.

Riding rockets is dangerous stuff. Around 1.4 per cent of Russian, Soviet, and American crewed spaceflight missions have resulted in fatalities. The foremost commercial space companies—Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin—must, over the coming years, bring that number down. Their profits depend on making frequent and safe human spaceflight a reality. “A private program can’t afford to lose anybody,” Branson has said.

And yet, perhaps more than any of its competitors, Branson’s company is already hard at work fashioning its identity as a luxury life-style brand. Virgin Galactic is marketing its space-tourism business but for the time being remains an experimental flight-test program. I’ve been covering this company for almost seven years, reporting on its triumphs and tragedies, and on the disconnect between its lofty rhetoric (“Virgin Galactic’s mission is to democratize space,” Branson has said) and its supersonic risks. This account was informed by discussions with eight people knowledgeable about the program.

Virgin Galactic’s space vehicle is unique among its competitors. Whereas SpaceX and Blue Origin operate traditional, vertical-launch rockets that are automated by engineers, Virgin Galactic uses a piloted, winged rocket ship. Every test flight is crewed, which makes each one a matter of life and death. (SpaceX, on the other hand, completed scores of launches before it flew with a human onboard; Blue Origin completed more than a dozen launches before it did the same.)

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-red-warning-light-on-richard-bransons-space-flight

The FAA has since grounded any further flights until their investigation is complete.

[ret5hd]

1. i REALLY hope they didn't make this type of mistake:

[yonder]

2. Good read at the link.

[Treefrog]

3. Rec.

[mn9driver]

4. The amazing thing to me is that people are willing to pay so much.

These are suborbital flights that only last a few minutes, for about $250,000 a pop.

Of course, SpaceX is planning on taking 4 paying passengers to the ISS, charging them $55 million each, so maybe it’s a bargain.