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A rocket science safety expert on Sunday said Virgin Galactic "ignored" safety warnings in the years leading up to the deadly crash of its spacecraft in California, as investigators hunted for clues to accident's cause.
Carolynne Campbell, a rocket propulsion expert with the Netherlands-based International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, said she could not speculate on the cause of Friday's crash without "all the data." However, she said multiple warnings had been issued to Virgin since 2007, when three engineers died testing a rocket on the ground.
http://news.yahoo.com/probe-virgin-spaceship-crash-may-085338983.html
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Expert: Virgin 'Ignored' Space Safety Warnings
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @02:21AM
"To be honest, I find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they're saying can be saying things before the NTSB makes their comments," he told reporters in Mojave on Saturday.
The NTSB has stated that the investigation into the SpaceShipTwo could take a year. I'm sure that Mr. Branson would love not to have to deal with pesky inquiries from the press or from Congress while the event is current news and fresh in people's memories.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/ntsb-spaceshiptwo-crash-analysis-could-take-year-n239276 [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 03 2014, @01:08PM
Branson is just calling out an attention whore using carefully chosen corporate-speak. In standard american english his corporate-speak translates to something like attention whores should STFU at least till the bury the dead guy and/or the scientists have something useful to say.
There's two types of people commenting.
The attention whores who always put their corporate name and full legal name and contact info first all the way down to "gimmie reddit gold". Hey you are here for the dead pilot and the crashed plane, but now that you're here, its all about me me me and did I mention my company and consulting rates and here's my full legal name and a DNA sample and fingerprints and my twitter handle because its all about me me me?
And then there are the folks who are not "all about me" who are at least semi-anonymous or at least not primarily pimping their corporation or themselves or their consultative services in the field.
A good SN car analogy is after Dale Earnhardt died you're gonna get two responses:
1) Yeah tough cookies about that crash but my name is Big Bubba and I work down here at Big Bubbas car repair and donut shop at 1234 BS Street, we can patch that old beater right up and get it back on the road, give us a call at 123-456-7890 and maybe git a paint job too and don't forget to "like" us on facebook and follow twitter hashtag #YeOldeBigBubbasCarRepairShoppeAndDonuts call us soon!
2) Well that sucks, wonder if a .mil ceramic chest plate insert could have saved him from puncture wounds or if it was the acceleration that got him in which case a "break away capsule" kinda device or external airbags or something might be the thing. I wonder if anyone's ever built a small doppler radar and a big air bag into the wall of a road, so if some car is about to hit a wall at 150 MPH it hits the wall mounted deployed airbag instead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @01:52PM
Speaking of which, Lisa Nowak (one of the love triangle astronauts) seized on the opportunity, and was rewarded by Branson:
http://recode.net/2014/11/01/richard-branson-speaks-after-virgin-galactic-tragedy/ [recode.net]
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Tuesday November 04 2014, @07:13AM
You could be right on, however…
Media deliberately tricks people into saying almost anything that if one had enough context (listened in on the conversation) would be purely innocent but which can easily be misused to create or increase the drama. Doesn't even have to require misquotations, just selective use. Writing that kind of news story isn't much different from social engineering. And $deity help anyone who has unique or non-conformist thoughts.
Few ordinary people would stonewall a “journalist”, they might even get the impression the “journalist” is looking for clarification, detail, correctness, or even knowledge when they ask about specific phrases or opinions.
Next step would be to use it to troll others with so as to continue the drama cycle.
So I wonder; how many “rocket scientists” did they talk to before striking gold? Did they skip over the pond right away in order to save time? Yeah there are some actual rocket scientists in Europe too, people who build and fire rockets and rocket engines, but I'm not aware of any dutch ones (try Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, France, the UK, Ukraine, and Russia and maybe Spain and Italy too as well as a handful of mostly inactive people in Sweden and Norway).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday November 03 2014, @09:07AM
Is there anything in this, or os it just a disgruntled blowhard? On the one hand you'd assume that pilots would refuse to fly something unsafe - they don't exactly live pay check to pay check and live in fear of being fired.
On the other hand I've caught snippets from other sources that thereoght be truth to this, with engineers leaving en-mass.
Don't tell me I have to go back to the other site :(
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday November 03 2014, @10:52AM
No, it's BS from people who like to speculate about their pet "I don't want to speculate but I-told-you-so" issues in order to get into the media.
I don't know whether the hybrid rocket engine they are using is less safe than other rocket engines or not, I do know that the phrase "it's not rocket science" is very non-specific about type of rocket, for a reason - all rockets are a lot more dangerous than just about any other form of transport.
I do know that the speculation is BS because the NTSB have already announced that the rocket engine (and fuel tanks) did _not_ blow up, rather the feathered tails deployed prematurely and tore the vehicle apart. I personally didn't think it looked like a fuel / engine explosion from the pictures, but I kept my trap shut on that in public.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 03 2014, @04:06PM
Scaled Composites may have acting on every one of her recommendations for all we know. It still doesn't prevent her from doing what she's doing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 03 2014, @09:16AM
It looks remarkably like "I'm going to speculate ...".
If she turns out to be correct, and *doesn't* follow up with some kind of "I told you so", no matter how weak, then I'll believe she isn't actually speculating.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday November 03 2014, @09:52AM
Take any safety audit, and tell me how many auditors are ever willing to walk away without finding something. Seem like they feel they just haven't done their job if they don't find something. Just as a trivial example: We have to have our electrical systems in the building audited every ten years. During the audit last year, the guy pinged our central breaker cabinet, because it would theoretically be possible to reach over the top of the (very tall) cabinet and touch a live wire. Just why anyone would go into a locked electrical closet (with warning sign), reach up over the top of a panel of electrical breakers, and start groping around? But we have an official safety warning, so we know that the auditor was here. Gee, thanks.
The point: of course there have been safety warnings. Most of them were probably bullshit. This is just useless blathering unless it turns out that there were actually specific and important warnings that were ignored. Which is what the subsequent investigation will determine.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 03 2014, @12:36PM
I had the same thought as yours although I'd adjust the phrase from
specific and important
To
specific and important and relevant
For example several people are commenting on the incident where a bunch of people were hurt / killed in a stereotypical compressed gas accident during some ground testing where AFAIK the ground testing gear explosively failed.
Going all SN automotive analogy, just because someone blew up an air compressor while filling their car tires doesn't imply they "must have repeated" ignored the bomb strapped to the ignition switch.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 03 2014, @03:58PM
Third, there is no reason to listen to her. It's not her business nor is she involved in the program in any way. I doubt she knows that much about Scaled Composites's rocket motor, and contrary to her assertions, I don't see evidence that a nitrous oxide hybrid motor is any more dangerous than any other rocket engine or motor. Every type of chemical rocket has safety issues. The fact that they were able to recover the wreckage mostly unburned is a near unique safety feature of hybrid motors. Liquid or solid fuel rockets would not had such a gentle outcome under the given failure mode.
Even if she did know enough, she is not unique in her knowledge of hybrid motor rocketry. There is no reason or obligation to respond to her.
Fourth, she has said other irresponsible things [dailymail.co.uk].
Mrs Campbell-Knight said: 'They should stop, give up. Go away and do something they might be good at like selling mobile phones - they should stay out of the space business.'
She claimed she had contacted those involved in the project in around 2009 or 2010 to raise her concerns about the use of nitrous oxide, which she said can 'go bang in a very unpredictable way'.
or the following (which comes directly from her company's website [knightsarrow.com]):
Since the publication of this article, the team has continued to amass information regarding this accident. If the truth about the 2007 accident had come out, if a Coroner’s Inquest into the deaths had been held, if everyone had told the truth, the fatal loss of Spaceship Two on 31 October 2014 would probably not have happened. The documentation and hard evidence we have amassed can be made available, on request, to any responsible party who wants to properly understand the issues.
My view is that this is just advertising, using a tragedy to increase visibility for one's business. It's worth noting that it was evident early on that the 2014 crash was not due to explosive decomposition of the nitrous oxide oxidizer (for example, the report that there was a survivor and the fact that most of the vehicle stayed together till it hit the ground were strong indications right from the start). So her report is completely irrelevant and has been so for some time.