Virgin Galatic Spaceship Two down in the Mojave.

[pchapman]

Just musings:

It does indeed look like the aircraft did a complete 180, as PrvtPilotRaderTech wrote, but it isn't certain. And it possibly happened very suddenly. (The Daily Mail does have good large photos.) After all, the smoke plume in one photo starts at the upwind end, as does a bit of flame on a slightly earlier photo. Also looks in one of those photos like both tails have just come off with the aircraft backwards, but that's very hard to tell. It suggests it wasn't just explosion leading to complete tail failure then leading to tumble & disintegration.

Instead something caused it to flip suddenly, while largely intact, followed by disintegration. Could a partial tail failure, either a simple structural failure or after an explosion, cause that? Seems less likely. That would more likely cause a more progressive loss of heading/yaw/pitch, then structural failure and breakup. On the other hand, what do I know about trim angles on the tail and its aerodynamic stability.

Still surprising how fast it seems to have actually happened, given that photos suggest it didn't just "blow up" completely. But although a witness described a sudden puff, as I've only seen stills, it isn't clear just what the timeline is.

What about the explosion itself flipping the craft? That would take a pretty good explosion.

Photos on the ground from the side make it look like the nitrous oxide tank is largely intact, ahead of the line where everything broke off -- the tails at the hinges, the wing panel flaps, and the solid part of the rocket motor and any oxidizer piping/valving/pumps. (I don't know the actual setup). (Photos were seen in a video in the UK's Telegraph newspaper website, interviewing a photographer.)

So if there were some combustion instability in the solid rocket part, with whatever nitrous oxide was being pumped in, what kind of explosion would result? I'm still surprised at how quickly the craft swapped ends -- IF indeed that's what I'm seeing. Maybe an explosion broke some of the rocket support structure, it started to jackknife, and the off-axis thrust was enough to make the craft swap ends.

In some hours or weeks this speculation will likely be dated by new information, but it's my best amateur effort at the curious sequence of events...


Edit: Some news is now reporting that it happened two minutes after drop. This changes the timeline as from photos and interviews I previously saw, it made it sound as if it was shortly after engine ignition.