Scaled Composites 339 accident near Koehn Dry Lake, CA
On October 31, 2014, a Scaled Composites 339 was involved in an accident near Koehn Dry Lake, CA. 1 person died. Damage to the aircraft: destroyed.
- Date
- October 31, 2014
- Place
- Koehn Dry Lake, CA
- Aircraft
- Scaled Composites 339 · RCKT
- Injuries
- 1 fatal, 1 serious, 0 minor
- Damage
- Destroyed
- Position
- 35.326°N, 117.945°W
- NTSB ID
- 20141031X74653
Official records · DCA15MA019
- Public docket: reports, statements and exhibits from the investigation
- Investigation page: status, final report and safety recommendations
NTSB summary
NTSB investigators traveled in support of this investigation and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this aerospace accident report. The Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx. The Aerospace Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-15/02. On October 31, 2014, at 1007:32 Pacific daylight time, the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) reusable suborbital rocket, N339SS, operated by Scaled Composites LLC (Scaled), broke up into multiple pieces during a rocket-powered test flight and impacted terrain over a 5-mile area near Koehn Dry Lake, California. The pilot received serious injuries, and the copilot received fatal injuries. SS2 was destroyed, and no one on the ground was injured as a result of the falling debris. SS2 had been released from its launch vehicle, WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), N348MS, about 13 seconds before the structural breakup. Scaled was operating SS2 under an experimental permit issued by the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) according to the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 437.
Probable cause
Scaled Composites' failure to consider and protect against the possibility that a single human error could result in a catastrophic hazard to the SpaceShipTwo vehicle. This failure set the stage for the copilot's premature unlocking of the feather system as a result of time pressure and vibration and loads that he had not recently experienced, which led to uncommanded feather extension and the sub
From Wikipedia
The VSS Enterprise crash occurred on October 31, 2014, when VSS Enterprise, a SpaceShipTwo experimental spaceflight test vehicle operated by Virgin Galactic, suffered a catastrophic in-flight breakup during a test flight and crashed in the Mojave Desert near Cantil, California. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board later concluded that the breakup was caused by Alsbury's premature unlocking of the air brake device used for atmospheric re-entry. The NTSB said other important factors in the accident were inadequate design safeguards, poor pilot training and lack of rigorous oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Text from Wikipedia, “VSS Enterprise crash”, CC BY-SA 4.0; shortened to the introduction. Authors.
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Source: NTSB aviation accident database (US government, public domain). Findings may be preliminary or later revised by the NTSB. Not a complete global record.
