AVweb’s Flight Safety section offers in-depth coverage of aviation safety topics, including accident analyses, risk management strategies, regulatory updates, and pilot training insights. Designed for pilots, instructors, and aviation professionals, this section provides timely information to enhance situational awareness and promote best practices in flight operations.
Losing people in a flight program is gut-wrenchingly hard and today I feel for all of the folks at Scaled Composites. None of them set out to lose a friend and injure another when they prepared to launch SpaceShipTwo last Friday. Their goal was the same as every person or team that has ever taken […]
Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson said Monday his space tourism project will continue and he still plans to be the first passenger.“We will finish building the next spaceship. We will learn from what happened to the first spaceship. We will test it many, many times,” Branson said in an interview with CNN to discuss Friday’s […]
When FAA officials agreed to ban flights above Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August, they knew the purpose was not for safety but to restrict media coverage of local street protests, The Associated Press reported on Monday. “They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out,” said one FAA manager, referring to […]
Investigators probing the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo are focusing on a potential uncommanded deployment of the vehicle’s unique feathering tail structure designed to create drag and control speed during atmospheric entry. In a press conference Sunday evening, NTSB acting chairman Christopher Hart said that early data indicated the crew activated one of two controls […]
The Wall Street Journal is reporting (subscription only) that structural failure, rather than an engine explosion, is the initial focus of the NTSB investigation into the loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo on Friday. It is quoting unnamed sources as saying the preliminary video and data analysis is turning the focus to an aerodynamic breakup, although […]
An atypically restrained Richard Branson told reporters on Saturday his Virgin Galactic will find the cause of Friday’s catastrophic loss of SpaceShipTwo but he’s making no predictions about how long it will delay his dream of carrying “ordinary people” to space. “We are not going to push on blindly,” Branson said shortly after his arrival […]
Friday’s loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was as inevitable was it was tragic. If anyone believes-as I think some do-that attaching “tourism” to space flight somehow erases the risk of flight beyond the atmosphere, this accident should disabuse them of that notion. But I wonder if it will. Promoting space tourism has gotten quite beyond […]
One test pilot has died and another has been seriously injured in the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo during a test flight from Mojave Air and Space Port, California. The company said that the spacecraft suffered an anomaly that resulted in loss of the vehicle. Parachutes were reportedly sighted in the area. One witness said […]
Shortly after liftoff of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares Rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia on Tuesday, Oct. 28, it became apparent to the operators that there was a problem with the launch and they hit the destruct button. Barron Beneski, vice president of corporate communications at Orbital, confirmed that the flight termination system was […]
Barrington Irving of Experience Aviation is on the first leg of a flight around the world in a Hawker jet to help teach school kids about science and technology. He spoke with AVweb’s Mary Grady during a stopover in Australia about the project, the jet, and the expeditions he’s taking part in along the way. […]
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