Did a certain aerospace company change its name?
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SpaceX and other space stuff
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I like it!
Of course, for some of us of a certain era, seeing the nose cone of a rocket open up can't help but remind us of...
Seems kinda elaborate ; I was expecting the two ships to just hook up to opposite ends of a long tether, at their midsection, and simultaneously fire a synchronised thrust in opposite directions.
I like it!
Of course, for some of us of a certain era, seeing the nose cone of a rocket open up can't help but remind us of...
View attachment 4390754
Same here ; proving that Musk is a Bond villain.
D
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I suggest they save billions, and buy a rope.
That might well take on a direction like a bolas and end up capturing a comet or something...
Genuine problem, or an agency angling for an infusion of cash from its "international partners?" 
International Space Station facing irreparable failures, Russia warns
International Space Station facing irreparable failures, Russia warns
Genuine problem, or an agency angling for an infusion of cash from its "international partners?"
International Space Station facing irreparable failures, Russia warns
Both. And they're not getting the exorbitant launch fees from the US anymore.
So Sunday around 3AM I woke up and I went out front of the house to have a cigarette. I look to the north in the sky and I see a trail of flame in the sky. I was a little surprised since I didn't know a launch was scheduled and it was either that or a UFO! Anyway after a couple seconds I could see what at night nearly looked like an explosion and a near perfect circle of flame extended out from that point and I could see something glowing lightly falling back to the ground. I could no longer make out anything moving forward on the trajectory it was on so I wasnt quite sure what happened.
The next morning I saw there had in fact been a Space X launch at the time and that was what it was. I have seen night launches plenty of times and they are spectacular but this night was extraordinarily clear and even with my eyes I could make out much. It was pretty obvious I had seen it just a moment before the lower stage separation and saw the booster falling back to Earth. Living here 30 miles from the Cape I have seen I can't tell you how many launches over the years I remember them as a kid watching the moon shots in a Saturn V, but I'll tell you that brief 20 or 30 seconds was one of the most spectacular I've ever seen. Maybe even the best. I wish I would have had my phone!
The next morning I saw there had in fact been a Space X launch at the time and that was what it was. I have seen night launches plenty of times and they are spectacular but this night was extraordinarily clear and even with my eyes I could make out much. It was pretty obvious I had seen it just a moment before the lower stage separation and saw the booster falling back to Earth. Living here 30 miles from the Cape I have seen I can't tell you how many launches over the years I remember them as a kid watching the moon shots in a Saturn V, but I'll tell you that brief 20 or 30 seconds was one of the most spectacular I've ever seen. Maybe even the best. I wish I would have had my phone!
I"ll take "Yeah, Right" for $100, Alex...
But the New Yorker reported that sources at the company said the safest course of action would have been for Mackay and Masucci to abort the flight once they saw that red light. It's not clear why the pilots chose to continue flying instead.
I'm sure it wouldn't have anything to do with all those cameras sending the boss-man's grinning face out all over the internet to claim his spot in the billionaire "astro-naught" micturition contest, and/or serve as an infomercial for their pre-salivating, pre-paying passengers-to-be.
Wow, the Branson business stinks even more when you find out what else happened besides a little "red warning light."
From the full New Yorker story (emphasis added to key points):
The Red Warning Light on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Space Flight
_____________________________________________________________
In July, 2018, Mackay and Masucci were conducting a test flight thirty miles above the Earth when the ship got away from them, spinning and tumbling in the thin air. Virgin Galactic’s lead test pilot and flight-test director, Mark Stucky, was monitoring the flight from mission control, fearful that if Mackay and Masucci didn’t steady the ship soon, their off-kilter descent could seriously damage the vehicle and put the pilots in danger. They landed safely, though a post-flight inspection exposed manufacturing defects that required months of repairs.
Seven months later, in February, 2019, Mackay and Masucci flew again, this time with an engineer in the back. They reached space, as planned, but the ship sustained significant damage when a bond holding the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer came unglued. “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people,” Todd Ericson, a retired Air Force Colonel and Virgin Galactic’s then vice-president of safety and test, told me in a 2020 interview. When, in Ericson’s view, management tried to keep the problem quiet, his concerns grew. “This should have been a come-to-Jesus moment, not the kind of thing you brush under the rug,” he said. The maintenance crew had supposedly inspected the ship and verified that it was safe to fly when it demonstrably was not, and Ericson was worried that the company was treating an organizational failure as an isolated incident. (The company disputed this account.) Eventually, Ericson shared his concerns with members of the board, which hired a retired Boeing executive to conduct a safety review of the flight-test program. Ericson resigned from his post in frustration, disillusioned by the company’s safety culture. (In a recent e-mail exchange, Ericson declined to comment on the company’s safety practices, or on his resignation.)
The former Boeing executive spent weeks interviewing pilots and engineers, before filing a forty-page report with observations and recommendations. Virgin Galactic, citing confidentiality agreements, declined numerous requests to share the document with me but said that it concluded it was safe to fly. Stucky, the flight-test director, told me that neither the former Boeing executive’s report, nor his observations, were ever shared with him or his team.
Stucky, a pillar of Virgin Galactic’s program and a legend in the flight-test community, had issued his own warnings about protecting the integrity of the flight-test program. In a 2017 e-mail to his team, he wrote, “We must stop de-scoping timelines because we are overworked and understaffed and instead should be jumping up and down on senior management’s desks saying exactly what contractor support, new hires, redistribution of effort, or whatever else is required.” In another e-mail, in 2019, he urged his fellow test pilots to be more transparent: “Failure to admit mistakes in flight test is a cancer that must be nipped at the bud.” Stucky, whom I wrote about in the magazine in 2018, had been particularly troubled by Mackay and Masucci’s unwillingness to take responsibility for what he perceived to be their mistakes on the July, 2018, flight.
Some of Stucky’s criticisms appeared in the book I wrote about him and Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship-program, “Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut.” After the publication of my book, in May, Stucky was stripped of his flight duties and excluded from key planning meetings ahead of the July 11th event. He watched Branson’s flight from the runway; it was the first mission for which he had no responsibilities after more than a decade on the program. Eight days after Branson’s flight, an H.R. manager booked time on his calendar, and then fired Stucky over Zoom.
_____________________________________________________________
Safety be damned! We've got joyriders lining up, screaming, "Take my money!"
I knew Branson was a career hype machine, but this puts his organization in a whole new light.
From the full New Yorker story (emphasis added to key points):
The Red Warning Light on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Space Flight
_____________________________________________________________
In July, 2018, Mackay and Masucci were conducting a test flight thirty miles above the Earth when the ship got away from them, spinning and tumbling in the thin air. Virgin Galactic’s lead test pilot and flight-test director, Mark Stucky, was monitoring the flight from mission control, fearful that if Mackay and Masucci didn’t steady the ship soon, their off-kilter descent could seriously damage the vehicle and put the pilots in danger. They landed safely, though a post-flight inspection exposed manufacturing defects that required months of repairs.
Seven months later, in February, 2019, Mackay and Masucci flew again, this time with an engineer in the back. They reached space, as planned, but the ship sustained significant damage when a bond holding the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer came unglued. “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people,” Todd Ericson, a retired Air Force Colonel and Virgin Galactic’s then vice-president of safety and test, told me in a 2020 interview. When, in Ericson’s view, management tried to keep the problem quiet, his concerns grew. “This should have been a come-to-Jesus moment, not the kind of thing you brush under the rug,” he said. The maintenance crew had supposedly inspected the ship and verified that it was safe to fly when it demonstrably was not, and Ericson was worried that the company was treating an organizational failure as an isolated incident. (The company disputed this account.) Eventually, Ericson shared his concerns with members of the board, which hired a retired Boeing executive to conduct a safety review of the flight-test program. Ericson resigned from his post in frustration, disillusioned by the company’s safety culture. (In a recent e-mail exchange, Ericson declined to comment on the company’s safety practices, or on his resignation.)
The former Boeing executive spent weeks interviewing pilots and engineers, before filing a forty-page report with observations and recommendations. Virgin Galactic, citing confidentiality agreements, declined numerous requests to share the document with me but said that it concluded it was safe to fly. Stucky, the flight-test director, told me that neither the former Boeing executive’s report, nor his observations, were ever shared with him or his team.
Stucky, a pillar of Virgin Galactic’s program and a legend in the flight-test community, had issued his own warnings about protecting the integrity of the flight-test program. In a 2017 e-mail to his team, he wrote, “We must stop de-scoping timelines because we are overworked and understaffed and instead should be jumping up and down on senior management’s desks saying exactly what contractor support, new hires, redistribution of effort, or whatever else is required.” In another e-mail, in 2019, he urged his fellow test pilots to be more transparent: “Failure to admit mistakes in flight test is a cancer that must be nipped at the bud.” Stucky, whom I wrote about in the magazine in 2018, had been particularly troubled by Mackay and Masucci’s unwillingness to take responsibility for what he perceived to be their mistakes on the July, 2018, flight.
Some of Stucky’s criticisms appeared in the book I wrote about him and Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship-program, “Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut.” After the publication of my book, in May, Stucky was stripped of his flight duties and excluded from key planning meetings ahead of the July 11th event. He watched Branson’s flight from the runway; it was the first mission for which he had no responsibilities after more than a decade on the program. Eight days after Branson’s flight, an H.R. manager booked time on his calendar, and then fired Stucky over Zoom.
_____________________________________________________________
Safety be damned! We've got joyriders lining up, screaming, "Take my money!"
I knew Branson was a career hype machine, but this puts his organization in a whole new light.
As an Amazon Associate, TalkBass may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via links on this site.
YIKES!Wow, the Branson business stinks even more when you find out what else happened besides a little "red warning light."
From the full New Yorker story (emphasis added to key points):
The Red Warning Light on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Space Flight
_____________________________________________________________
In July, 2018, Mackay and Masucci were conducting a test flight thirty miles above the Earth when the ship got away from them, spinning and tumbling in the thin air. Virgin Galactic’s lead test pilot and flight-test director, Mark Stucky, was monitoring the flight from mission control, fearful that if Mackay and Masucci didn’t steady the ship soon, their off-kilter descent could seriously damage the vehicle and put the pilots in danger. They landed safely, though a post-flight inspection exposed manufacturing defects that required months of repairs.
Seven months later, in February, 2019, Mackay and Masucci flew again, this time with an engineer in the back. They reached space, as planned, but the ship sustained significant damage when a bond holding the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer came unglued. “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people,” Todd Ericson, a retired Air Force Colonel and Virgin Galactic’s then vice-president of safety and test, told me in a 2020 interview. When, in Ericson’s view, management tried to keep the problem quiet, his concerns grew. “This should have been a come-to-Jesus moment, not the kind of thing you brush under the rug,” he said. The maintenance crew had supposedly inspected the ship and verified that it was safe to fly when it demonstrably was not, and Ericson was worried that the company was treating an organizational failure as an isolated incident. (The company disputed this account.) Eventually, Ericson shared his concerns with members of the board, which hired a retired Boeing executive to conduct a safety review of the flight-test program. Ericson resigned from his post in frustration, disillusioned by the company’s safety culture. (In a recent e-mail exchange, Ericson declined to comment on the company’s safety practices, or on his resignation.)
The former Boeing executive spent weeks interviewing pilots and engineers, before filing a forty-page report with observations and recommendations. Virgin Galactic, citing confidentiality agreements, declined numerous requests to share the document with me but said that it concluded it was safe to fly. Stucky, the flight-test director, told me that neither the former Boeing executive’s report, nor his observations, were ever shared with him or his team.
Stucky, a pillar of Virgin Galactic’s program and a legend in the flight-test community, had issued his own warnings about protecting the integrity of the flight-test program. In a 2017 e-mail to his team, he wrote, “We must stop de-scoping timelines because we are overworked and understaffed and instead should be jumping up and down on senior management’s desks saying exactly what contractor support, new hires, redistribution of effort, or whatever else is required.” In another e-mail, in 2019, he urged his fellow test pilots to be more transparent: “Failure to admit mistakes in flight test is a cancer that must be nipped at the bud.” Stucky, whom I wrote about in the magazine in 2018, had been particularly troubled by Mackay and Masucci’s unwillingness to take responsibility for what he perceived to be their mistakes on the July, 2018, flight.
Some of Stucky’s criticisms appeared in the book I wrote about him and Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship-program, “Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut.” After the publication of my book, in May, Stucky was stripped of his flight duties and excluded from key planning meetings ahead of the July 11th event. He watched Branson’s flight from the runway; it was the first mission for which he had no responsibilities after more than a decade on the program. Eight days after Branson’s flight, an H.R. manager booked time on his calendar, and then fired Stucky over Zoom.
_____________________________________________________________
Safety be damned! We've got joyriders lining up, screaming, "Take my money!"
I knew Branson was a career hype machine, but this puts his organization in a whole new light.
As an Amazon Associate, TalkBass may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via links on this site.
