The dismissed director of flight tests of Virgin Galactic, Mark Stuckey, revealed the company's problems. According to him, the pilot's error, and not a strong wind, led to the deviation from the original course of the Unity suborbital spacecraft, on board of which was the British billionaire Richard Branson, writes Parabolic Arc.
According to Stucky, who was dismissed eight days after the spacecraft flight, the investigation of the circumstances of the incident should be carried out by an independent party, and not by the company itself. "The wind was within normal limits, they did not do anything significant to eliminate the trajectory error," a former employee said about the actions of the pilots.
Stuckey stressed that the pilots did not turn off the engine and did not interrupt the flight of Unity after the ship left the air corridor, because Branson was on board, who wished before another billionaire, an American Jeff Bezos, take a flight on his own ship. Branson does not agree with Stuckey's position.
In September, SpaceNews reported that an unnamed supplier had notified the company of a potential manufacturing defect in a component of the Unity spacecraft's flight control system. Virgin Galactic added that they are consulting with the contractor.
In September, the New Yorker, citing the US Civil Aviation Administration, wrote that the suborbital Unity spacecraft of Virgin Galactic during the first flight with a full crew, including Branson, deviated from the originally planned course.
In July, businessman Branson climbed to an altitude of more than 80 kilometers on an orbital Unity aircraft manufactured by his own company Virgin Galactic. Along with the billionaire, the crew included pilots Dave McKay and Michael Masucci, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett and the company's vice president for government relations Sirisha Bundle.
Ivan Potapov