Main Engine Cut Off

Doug Messier of Parabolic Arc clipped some excerpts from a New Yorker profile of Virgin Galactic’s Mark Stucky and added some context of his own.

Featured in both is some info on the April 5th test flight—the first powered flight of VSS Unity. Apparently, the pilots were preparing to shut down the engine because of the roll problems—they were never supposed to end up inverted. And the second powered flight looked even worse than that. No wonder Virgin Galactic only releases snippets of edited video, rather than posting the full flight duration video.

I’m surprised Stucky was willing, able, and/or brave enough to tell these anecdotes to anyone outside the organization. I don’t think the higher-ups are going to be too keen on that.

This vehicle continues to scare me.