Comments on: That’s why they’re called test flights (updated)

By: Personal Spaceflight » Wired gets punk’d

Personal Spaceflight » Wired gets punk’d — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:33:16 +0000

[…] first I was impressed that Wired got its hands on what presumably was video from the April 20 test flight that included a tail scrape during a tough-and-go, followed by some touchy statements from Scaled […]

By: anon

anon — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:41:13 +0000

Scaled cannot complain about bad press, in that the program
has been very media involved. Virgin has been using Scaled
as a PR conduit, so, occasionally some less then glowing stories will be written. Scaled/Virgin has 2 choices at this point. Stop all Press, pull behind the curtain, and complete flight test in the shadows, or, pull back the curtains, release as much as possible without damaging patent applications and show the whole show.

as for aysmetric thrust settings causing this roll, as Rob points out, it doesn’t bode well for the day they blow a turbine on takeoff.

Well if Scaled sends someone to the SETP annual dinner it will be quite interesting to see their talk.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:07:35 +0000

Flight Global strikes back… http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/04/23/325577/scaled-admits-whiteknight-two-rudder-problem.html

And a nice picture of the tailstrike… http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/WK2%20tail%20strike%20compress.jpg

As much as I agree with Scaled on the merits of having a non-public test flight program and disagree with Flight Global that WK2 is experiencing anything more than prototype growing pains… It is kind of unfair of Scaled/Virgin to complain about speculative reporting when Scaled refuses to give updates of any kind or make accurate and unearned positive statements about the test flight program. IE: Will Whithorn in the Virgin released video states that the test flight program has been flawless, disregarding the odvious tail wagging in the video just before he says it.

It is nice to know that the rudder modifications were simply for pilot “feel” and not underlining a bigger problem.