When Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo began coming apart just seconds after it had been launched from its mothership and its rocket motor had fired, the pilots were wearing parachutes but had no ejection seats – just an escape hatch. Nor were they wearing oxygen masks or space suits at an altitude where the temperature was about 70 degrees below zero.
The Washington Post reports that employees of Scaled Composites (which built SpaceShipTwo) “are calling Siebold’s survival miraculous, and they describe his escape like something out of a movie script.”
“The fact that he survived a descent of 50,000 feet is pretty amazing,” said Paul Tackabury, a veteran test pilot who sat on the board of directors of Scaled Composites until it was sold to Northrop Grumman Corp. “You don’t just jump out of aircraft at Mach 1 at over 50,000 feet without a spacesuit.”
If he was still strapped into his seat (which was not designed to eject him from SpaceShipTwo, nor would it likely have allowed him to exit through the escape hatch), then he must have been thrown clear – remaining conscious and with the presence of mind to fall to a lower altitude (where the temperature was warmer and the atmosphere contained more oxygen), then unstrap from the seat, and deploy the parachute.
At a press conference this week, acting NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said cockpit video and data showed that the co-pilot unlocked SpaceShipTwo’s unique “feathering” system earlier than planned. The system works somewhat like the wing flaps that airplanes use to slow for landing. A full investigation into the cause is expected to last a year.
[via The Washington Post]