Virgin Galactic: The Myth of Informed Consent for Space Tourism 

Some corrections: Thanks to @slome815 for pointing out there was one other launch system with no escape provision: Voskhod. I completely forgot about that one. I said FBW was ‘the norm’ in 1968. That’s not correct. Irreversible controls were but fbw was in its infancy. There is a correction to kind of address it at 49 minutes and I’ll be doing an entire video about it in a few weeks. Thanks @SoloRenegade

Just remember, the Karmen line is not fixed and arbitrary, but the Kerman line is unambiguously fixed and easily tracked by when the music changes.

Alexander: Every time you get in a vehicle you are, in effect, rolling a dice. Oceangate: *flips coin*

One of the Mercury/Redstone engineers is still with us. He is 92 years old and comes to our shop for little machining jobs he can’t do in his home shop. Talked to him about meeting Wehrner Von Braun down in Alabama. He described the man as a skilled publicist and salesman as much as he was a scientist and engineer. Old Lyle is living history. Every time I see him is a bonus.

In the wake of Ocean Gate, any argument about a CEO's personal faith in product safety should ring especially hollow.

"I had been conditioned to believe that there is nothing more dangerous than the arrogance of ignorance; now I would learn that it does not compare with the arrogance of knowledge, knowledge that is often confused with wisdom." -John Piña Craven, 1959, on being appointed Chief Scientist of the US Navy.

With respect to the "pilots wouldn't do it if it wasn't safe": I know one of the astronauts who was on the return to flight mission after the Columbia shuttle disaster. He told me that the pilots and most of the astronauts (at least) would have gone up in a shuttle the next day if they had been allowed to. They are probably more capable of understanding the risks of spaceflight than most people. They would have been willing to take the flight before anyone really even understood what happened. I would be willing to count that as "informed consent" but it had nothing to do with whether they believed it was safe (to the extent that spaceflight can be safe.) They understood the risks as well as anyone and decided it was worth it. Many people would do these things despite them being unsafe, and that's fine, but for a layman to have informed consent, the risk needs to be appropriately characterized.

Military systems engineer here. "Procedure" is *literally* the second to last choice for risk mitigation (the last choice being a placard, i.e., "YOLO - here's a sign to tell you to watch out for that!").

When you mentioned Virgin hiring a frmr. Boeing exec I let out one horrified laugh knowing how buried important safety info would promptly become.

My trust of transport platforms is now is based on the probability of an incident being followed up with the global engineering community collectively asking "well what did they expect?"

The mirage III had hydraulic controls, but the stick was linked to mini-control surfaces in the middle of the delta wing giving back-force to the pilot

The parts manual for a 60-year-old jet that I deal with is approximately 16" thick. The maintenance manual is closer to 2 foot.

I'm glad you framed it in terms of informed consent rather than risk-taking per se.

When I was in Space Camp I asked what would happen if the explosive bolts didn't fire when the SRBs were ignited. The engineer who was talking to us just shrugged and went "The boosters tear them off and you launch anyway."

Part of my day job involves compiling reports with data from engineers on failure probabilities. The numbers show certain things to be highly improbably ... until they occur. When calculating how many sides on the die, there is never enough information to really nail it down. Hundreds or thousands of hours of analysis sometimes is no better than a WAG. In my world, even a tiny chance of something going wrong in a given hour gets multiplied by tens of millions of hours.

As someone with a passion for engineering this is the kind of content i crave. its a refreshing break from alot of the content out there that basically just reads off the wikipedia page. also as a sidenote, ive also designed my own hybrid rockets and have recently been working on one basically the same as yours but i couldnt think of a decent way to break the nitrous cannister so thanks for that 😅

Hello, loved the vid just popping in as a colourblind person to say I can't tell the difference between the yellow and green used in the Venn diagram. I get that it fits our established associations with the colours, but adding some sort of pattern marker would be huge in the future. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, stripes or dots or something like that.

The purpose of commercial spaceflight is not to benefit humanity. It is to generate profits for as little operating cost as possible. Nothing else.

Perhaps the FAA has not demanded certification for Virgin Galactic nor Blue Origin because they are not in the business of *transportation*. Their sub-orbital craft are essentially glorified amusement park rides.

I think Alexander already gets this, but it's worth pointing out: The presence of an LES isn't important, what matters is how many failures and at what point in the mission will result in survival vs. death. If you focus more on the presence of a system than its capabilities, you can end up thinking ejection seats are a good idea in vertically-launched, vertically-landing spacecraft, for example. A proper escape system will be good, but it needs to actually be an effective design.

Best of luck with your growing channel. You put a lot of work into this.

I signed up, ready To Go!!! Can't wait to see the Titanic in person!

What a superb feature: using well-researched and referenced information to build a compelling argument. It’s quite accessible, yet detailed. You’ve found a new subscriber.

I work on liquid rocket motors and as i've heard a colleague of mine who worked on a previous hybrid rocket motor say- Solid rockets don't want to shut off, liquid rockets don't want to start, and solid rockets don't want to do either

Really enjoying these deep dives. Thank you for the work you put in on this. "I do not care if operators are sued or not, this conversation is about safety." Lordy if I didn't end up walking away from a health and safety position when I realized all I was supposed to do was minimize liability. God forbid we actually make things safe.

Civil engineer.. Love the video. I know you're specifically talking Virgin Galactic but overall a brilliant presentation that well summarizes the state of "safety" in the billionaire unknown-tourism industry (space/ocean/etc). I hope against hope we see more change towards understanding this way of thinking without more accidents happening first.

I took the footage used in your opening. There are some gaps and anomalies in the publicly available data about the 2014 crash. It is possible that something happened before the feather mechanism was activated, something that Alsbury was responding to. Nitrous can act as a monopropellant with a very energetic decomposition. If this happened inside the fuel injector valve it would have weakened the structure in a way that is consistent with the geometry of the breakup and with long range photography of the mishap.

Yeah it's 2024 now. Just saying, if it's Boeing, I ain't going.

Excellent presentation! This thing is even more Kerbal than I originally thought. "Failure isn't an option, it's standard equipment" :D

The Apollo Computer F-8 sounds like an interesting story, but what I want to hear about even more is the MR-1 launch (or just mercury-redstone in general)

1. They *have* a real VP of Safety? 2. Based on my private sector experience, no way in hell would I want to be responsible for safety at a private space company. The profit lust compromises everything, the need to please investors leads to pressure to overpromise and then cut corners trying to fulfill those overpromises.

"informed consent", by design, requires information to make a consensual judgement. Commercial secrets kinda sort of make this a bit tricky. One would have to be a bit of a nutter to go up in the thing, hey.

From calculations and engineering done later, I think that the space shuttle having about 65 sides is optimistic, as many avenues of failure did not result in disaster due to a massive amount of luck.

I too, have always had concerns, when I've heard the statement "it must be safe otherwise the pilot wouldn't fly in it" as history books are full of stories about dead pilots. I do, however, believe there's a 99.9999% chance the pilot will do as much as humanly possible to avoid disaster. Germanwings flight 9525 is one of the reasons it's not 100%.

Great video! Have always found the Rutan/Virgin Galactic model/approach a bit sketch... Minor quibble, at 49:29, that's not Charlie Brown, that's Linus Van Pelt!

13:25 - There has been one (or two) more suborbital crewed space flight not in your list. Notably, it was an *attempt* at orbital space flight, though. Soyuz 18a had an in-flight launch anomaly that caused the flight to be aborted (the third rocket stage lit its engines while still being attached to the second stage, so the Soyuz capsule engines fired to pull it away from way-off-target launch vehicle.) This capsule reached a height of nearly 200 km, more than high enough to be “a space flight.” Although if we’re counting Virgin Galactic, then another in-flight-abort should be counted, too. Soyuz MS-10 experienced a similar launch booster failure, which caused it to separate. It reached 92 km of altitude, high enough for the 80km definition. There was a third Soyuz crewed abort, but it was on the pad, so reached nowhere near space.

The amount I learned from this video about laws, planes, spacecraft, flight control systems, regulations, ethics, rocket engines, aerodynamics, systems design, automation and insomnia are exceptionally impressive. Thank you for this wonderful presentation and previous presentations on submersibles along with the associated sources, plenty of things to dig into. I really look forward to future videos.

When people use the "pilots do it" argument, they miss a very important point, those pilots are not average people they are test pilots, with who knows how many hours of experience and a death wish. Let's differentiate that any risk has two independent factors, the inherent risk and the "if you stupid" risk. There are many people doing dangerous work, but as long as you stick to the rules you're very likely will be fine, but than again, there are special cases when you have both inherent and stupidity risk and need the truly unhinged who would happily sacrifice their own life just to help humanity progress a little bit. Those scientist come to mind, who designed the ejection seat, and tested the human tolerance for G force. Hats off to people like that.

This is so much more elaborate than news outlets saying "oh it crashed😢", we need more of this type of content!

GOOD video. I've been waiting for someone to do a deep-dive like this for a long time, and got super excited when I saw your poll.

Calling them Astronauts and Mission Specialists is for the same reason they were Mission Specialists on the Titan. The informed consent rules are certainly different for "Crew" compared to "Passengers". The liability laws probably parse depending on if it is a 'customer' vs 'crew'. They are not calling them that just for marketing.

You don’t have a ton of subscribers yet. But your content reminds me of Perun, the defense economics RU-vidr who blew up since the full scale invasion of Ukraine. I’m looking forward to when you do your 100k subs video and I can say I was there before 10k ❤

Excellent production sir. I have a BSc in Aerospace Engineering and was an RAF pilot (including instruction and limited aircraft-testing) for all of my working career. No hyperbole on your part, well-informed, and you when the info was beyond your expertise we were told. Thanks for your work sir. Cheers.

This is a fantastic romp through many of the issues involving "space flight." I would add one thing to the subject of failure rates; the learning rate. It is inevitable that there will be failures in new (and existing) technology, but how we respond and learn from them has a huge effect on the likelihood of future failures, and this varies widely by the culture within organizations. Those that are self reflective and collaborative, along with valuing safety as the number one priority, tend to have much better outcomes. Many years ago I met a woman at a trade show who claimed to be the granddaughter of the engineer who created the axiom known as "Murphy's Law" (she actually told me three, but I have forgotten two of them). She explained that the common one "if anything can go wrong, it will" was not meant as a fatalism, but meant to be a quality control tool for mostly engineers, but also for designers and manufacturers, to use when creating products. This was because many engineers and people suffer from the hubris of believing that their product will work as designed, since they are looking to for sources of success, and do not attack their work assuming that it will ultimately fail under the right conditions.

On FBW systems: just a couple of years ago (2020) an F-35 crashed at Eglin AFB due to pilot error and some interesting fly-by-wire system behavior

Just because Branson flew in Spaceship 2 doesn't mean Virgin Galactic has done adequate safety assessments internally. Rush chose to dive his Titan under similar conditions, and died in it. It should also be noted that Starship doesn't currently have a planned crew escape system in its design, though that might change in the future.

Very interesting as always, hope you keep making these videos

An outstanding piece of reporting and analysis. I am a longtime aviation/space writer and, being weary of VG's heedless rush toward disaster, did not expect to stay for more than a few minutes. In the event, I could not put down my tablet until you finished.

43:00 If the aircraft is actively nosing up to bleed velocity and extend range, that isnt a ballistic reentry. Ballistic is a reference to the parabolic path of travel (though, this of course is shortened by the atmosphere as seen with true ballistic reentries with Soyuz craft). If I'm not mistaken, the Apollo capsules technically weren't ballistic entries either due to the heat shield acting as a lifting body due to the angle of attack. Great video, though!

That first person pilot induced oscillation footage at the end is one of the scariest things I've ever seen. I bet that test pilot seriously reconsidered his life choices. Great video. This is definitely the best video I've seen with even close to this few views. Keep up the good work! Subscribed.

Mike Adam's accident was due to him experiencing vertigo and positioning the aircraft essentially perpendicular to its flight path while at high altitude... Hard to picture! Shortly after, while re-entering the denser atmosphere, the aircraft entered a spin as a consequence. The initial trigger was, as far as I remember, some kind of electrical failure that distracted him. But vertigo was the overriding factor. It was learnt after the accident that he had been prone to it during his initial flight on the X15.

I’ve been real sick and stuck in bed here recently and having a lot going on in my mind thinking the whole lot but I discovered your content and I promise you this scratches all the rot scratch spots in my mind. I literally enjoy it so much I cannot get enough of it, I have to keep myself from falling asleep not because it’s boring because I find it super interesting but it’s so interesting and entertaining that it’s relaxing and I could literally fall asleep

I hope potential passengers see this video.

"This video is not a billionaire showdown" thank you so much for this haha it's getting really tiring to always hear about the billionaires who own the company when people report on space news

I appreciate your professional approach to presentation of content - specifically, clear LIMITATIONS and disambiguization of "conflict of interest or endorsement" Your structure adds to ease of understanding concepts. Keep up the great work!!

To not have a fly by wire system with hydrologics or electric actuators is crazy at Mach speeds, just insane 😅

In some sense, in specific areas of life, participation in democratic governance is the only form of agency individuals could ever have. Private companies are at the mercy of each other, as the competition might reward strategies majority of the individuals would prefer not to use: such as cutting corners in safety, or using child labour. And ultimately the world is too complex for any individual to make even very basic informed decisions, without reliance on others. Democracy and state is ultimately how the rules and conventions of that relationship is set. Trading information, such as paying for a consult, depends on the state to enforce honesty. And for those reasons, I sincerity think denying an industry regulation by state harms it overall. Usually doing so only benefits the already existing entities in that field. Without regulation, the commercial space industry can not form a honest market, and in some areas can’t have beneficial competition that drives innovation. It will remain highly risky, insurance companies won’t facilitate lowering the risks per-launch, and so few applications can make use of the services the industry can provide. Sure the companies can create more products more easily, but the products are much weaker without the structure state and regulations provide. It’s very shortsighted to point at the cheaper development costs, if they severe the value of the end-products by causing huge insurance costs and lower demand overall.

Excellent presentation! With how few incidents there have been there's not much info or discussion of safety in space tourism. I think there will need to be more refinement of designs and procedures as it gets more mainstream with a larger customer base. Unlike air travel or extreme tourism "experiences" though it presents many unique challenges and may never reach the same level of safety.

Great video. You did a good job of presenting facts in a non biased way. I agree with your concerns and cautionary assessments.

This channel went from interesting to my absolute most favourite channel on youtube.

This has been extremely enlightening. I'm really enjoying your work, keep it up!

Another excellent video...I can really see this channel going places!

Excellent video as always - I’m by no means an engineer so I always learn a LOT from your videos 👍🏻

"I wish her and the other passengers the best of luck, though I do not know how much they will need." Absolutely excellent closing statement! Really drives home how little is disclosed by the company regarding safety systems.

We focus on system design, communications and legislation only. Now we're speaking the same language.

I’m shocked by the lack of automation in this design and I think it’s a cost saving measure

This is really brilliant, in-depth content. I very much appreciate it and am looking forward to more! cheers from germany!

For what its worth, Virgin fired their chief test pilot because he reported an almost fatal incident during one of their test flights to a reporter at Washington post. Essentially, acting as a whistle blower. The RH horizontal stabilizer exploded during boost. About 40 seconds in if I remember correctly. Anyways... their main oxidizer tank is growing weaker and weaker...

As a gay man, I find Blue Origins design to be... Delightfully erousing

The Space Shuttle was estimated to have a loss of 1 in 100 flights before it flew, as history tells the first major loss was flight 25 & 107. So the real statistics were stacking up to being say 2 losses per 100 flights across a small fleet of craft. Compared to say the 1966 Soviet Soyuz is the most reliable with over 1900 flights, flown way more than the still baby Falcon 9. Virgin Galactic has a sniff of Ocean Gate going on, but so does a trip to the top of Mount Everest. Life's boring without taking massively expensive risks. Anyway imaging the bragging rights once you have survived such a risky adventure.

Fantastic video - thanks so much for making it!

This channel is about to take off I hope. Incredible video. Love these long form projects

Excellent video, my only critique is that the “security is a fly by wire system” panel in the 1968 paper is definitely Linus, not Charlie Brown. I think that might even be his blanket in the lower right!

Excellent analysis as in your previous offerings. For anyone in the UK having watched Branson's "trajectory", none of this seems much of a surprise. The "astronauts" who have gone up so far or are planning to, until the inevitable happens and the exploded bits of machinery are swept up and quietly disposed of, presumably imagine that BOTH the NTSB and NASA have implemented some form of more-rigorous-than-normal oversight here, throughout what they assume to have been the lengthy and judiciously executed design and testing phases. For my part I'm not at all surprised the only thing NASA are really bothered about is what happens when the bits come crashing back to Earth. Regarding loss of cabin pressure at 80 km, does anyone even know whether there is some kind of pressurised oxygen supply (as on planes)? Though I'm presuming that the pressure there is so low than in fact the physiological consequences would be far beyond just needing pressurised oxygen: horrific death essentially involving the explosion of the soft tissues (lungs, eyeballs, etc.). So best not to dwell on such depressing eventualities: it might undermine the Astronaut Experience™.

It is only a matter of time until there is a space tourism accident on par with what happened with the OceanGate Titan, and then people will start asking questions about the safety standards or lack thereof in the growing private space industry.

This sadly needs a lot more attention in my opinion! Thank you for making an amazing video!

Oceangate 2: galactic boogaloo? I'll be eagerly waiting

Good video, can't believe this operation hasn't been shutdown like Virgin Orbit 💀

At 32:15 - my guess is that passengers are referred to as “Astronauts” as part of a bid to avoid legal repercussions in case of a fatal accident á la the Oceangate titan implosion

You are so underrated and deserve more attention. I love space and technology and hope to see more content soon

Rich folks doing dumb FOMO adventures and dying in accidents..Meh don't care.

Virgin has been "Galactic" since 2000 but can't even achieve low earth orbit...

Great video, but I would have liked to see small clips of all of these crashes/launch failures spliced in as you talked about them.

You're doing amazing work. Keep it up.

Interesting analysis. Every activity in life, including just being alive, has risks. None of us get out of here alive. That said, having the freedom to be able to do what one loves is critically important to joy in life, even if it ends your life. Whether it's eating fast food "too much", bicycling next to traffic, hang gliding, SCUBA diving, diving in a submersible, sailing, jet skiing, playing football, hiking, mountain climbing, driving or racing cars, paragliding, flying planes, flying jets, flying rockets to orbit, to the moon, or even to Mars 1-way; that's important to joy and happiness in life. Sitting doing crossword puzzles and surfing, too. Inactivity can be just a deadly and is arguably more deadly than taking off in a rocket that explodes. Dead is dead. When there is overregulation, it reduces joy, which is necessary for health and thus for life. Certainly, people want to be as careful as possible to avoid serious injury or death, yet overregulation is a sure way to destroy joy, and thus causes slower deaths that are rarely talked about. Physical activity is necessary for health. Today, we have an unacceptable amount of people with anxiety disorders, obesity, depression, etc. and higher than ever suicide rates. As far as informed consent, this should be up to the person taking part in the activity, whether it be going for a dive to the Titanic in the Titan, going for a flight in a rocket, going for a drive, or taking a novel vaccine in a pandemic. It should be up to those adults taking part in the activity to assess the risks and benefits, which are not always health and safety. Sometimes it is joy, sometimes it is research knowledge, sometimes it is for the good of humanity, the good of one's country (taking part in a war for instance), for bettering one's self, for helping someone else (such as donating a kidney, exploring a mine), and so on. An activity may be desirable for the fun of it, or again, to produce joy. ... When regulations are created by a government that are restricting, they are limiting freedoms and thus may be (and usually are) causing harm. Limiting children from having access to a decent chemistry set may have saved some children from injuries and even a few deaths, yet the damages done to the millions of others, in the form of lack of knowledge and hands-on experience, in horrific. The same is true of firearms restrictions. When people don't have access to knowledge and hands-on experience, that activity becomes far less safe. Such activities should be regulated by parents on an individual basis. Parents know and are responsible for their children and their actions. They are also responsible for their education. I'm not saying they shouldn't take precautions - They absolutely should! Just as we teach children that taking the keys and driving a car isn't acceptable, nor is taking a gun by themselves or using a "real" chemistry set by themselves. In order for humanity to learn new things, we ALL need to learn the "rules"(physics, chemistry, etc.) and accept that in any action, there are dangers. NOTHING IS SAFE!!! We also need to take full responsibility for our own actions. Having an overregulated nanny state is dangerous and deadly, as well as stunting exploration and learning. Computer models aren't the same as hands-on learning, and as we have seen, computer models and programs limit those using them to the designer's viewpoints, errors, and programming. Computers can NOT account for experimental design flaws and/or variables outside the programming. As you stated, rockets are unpredictable. Thus, the only way to test them accurately, find problems, and create solutions for those problems is to do test launches. While you may find it astonishing that some would test a rocket by going on board, there are those who absolutely would. Research costs money, and lots of it. Sometimes, the only way to get certain research done is to take risks. Until and unless we can reduce those costs, people are going to have to take risks in order to conduct research. I'm not saying not to use computer modeling, as it can be helpful, but it is limited. I'm not saying to be careless - far from it. I AM saying that EVERY person partaking in ANY activity, no matter what that is, needs to judge for themselves whether the activity is worth the risks. You can stay in bed 24/7, yet you'll atrophy, you won't have any spacial awareness nor balance, you'll be prone to falls, you'll likely be overweight, have venous issues, and you'll be at risk for blood clots, and other cardiovascular events. There will sadly be people who will drive drunk or on drugs who will endanger others on the road, and for that, we clearly need laws. When it comes to taking risks, oneself or as a small group, people must have the freedom to judge the risks for themselves. Certainly, we will lose some people who take risks for themselves, yet we will lose adventure, lose joy, and we'll never be free to be ourselves if we are not allowed to take some risks ourselves. We will also have adventure, exercise, research, and science in general crushed if we regulate and restrict activities. Our obesity, diabetes, anxiety, depression and many other issues today are from an overregulated and thus crushed adventure. Lawsuits also crush adventure, and the fear surrounding the possibility of being sued can be just as damaging. God gave us freedom and stifling that is creating government-induced slavery. That needs to stop! Let each individual determine their own risk to benefit ratio! I went to my local mountains fully prepared and equipped to deal with contingencies for over a month in the snow, yet I had planned to only spend the night. I had played in and enjoyed the snow in those mountains for over 50 years, literally. I was mortified that the sherrif's department had the road blocked, and I was told there was a $5,000 fine and that one could be arrested if you went up the mountain anyhow. I'm getting older, I don't handle heat well, and I have been waiting for the right weather to go to the snow. I had waited a couple of years for great snow and conditions that were safer to go to the snow. The government ruined my adventure. And the snow wasn't nearly as deep as it had been. A few people had gone to the mountains unequipped, with no idea how to deal with the snow, and the government thought it was OK to ruin many people's trips because a few people were irresponsible. I can't leave this state soon enough, as a result. I'd spent money on gear to properly take care of myself while there. It was depressing to have such repressive and likely unconstitutional rules by a government official. That was months ago, and I'm still depressed and disgusted that a government can take away freedom from responsible individuals like that in America. Without freedom, we are slaves. I hope you think about this and that others di as well before regulations and laws for well-meaning people, kill us all. I grew up in a far freer country than we have today. People haven't learned to care for themselves in a variety of circumstances as they haven't been allowed to explore those circumstances. Will kids be put into bubbles in a few years and be totally helpless? We seem to be headed that way.

so many inaccuracies and outright lies in this video. bubble boy logic.

Had I been betting when the concord started I would've thought "no way this is gonna be in regular use, much less 27 years". Safe is always a measurement of risk and initially that risk can appear higher in regions of unknown. That said, had Ocean Gate used a large steel sphere we likely wouldn't be talking about the risk of space tourism with such a critical eye. I do believe there is a way to make space tourism safe enough for regular use, but the jury is still out on if Virigin has achieved this.

The McDowell line is the best line IMO to judge if you are in space or not. Great video!

Too many factual errors in the video for me to take it seriously. You state that only three spacecraft in history flew without a LES, this is not true, Gemini, Vostok and Voshkod also had no LES. You could argue that Gemini and Vostok had ejection seats, but those were only usable the first couple of seconds in a launch. You also conflate hydraulic and fly-by-wire. Not all Hydraulic flight controls are fly by wire, and some hydraulic systems are even fully reversible. Many early supersonic jets have no fly by wire, they only have a normal, directly coupled hydraulic system, where the input on the stick directly relates to the position of flight controls. By your logic my 1980 Trabant has computer controlled fly by wire brakes, they are hydraulic and not mechanical after all. The idea that all early supersonic jets like the Mig-15, or F-105 were fly by wire is just laughable. It would not be until the F-16 that a supersonic jet would be all fly-by-wire. If a novice like me can point out these basic errors, that makes me doubt how credible the rest of the video is.

Very unbalanced right from the start Clearly opinion base with little or no understanding flight. Just one more armchair pilot. That was clear by the pronunciations and lack of fact based evidence. At beginning there was a very silly attempt to portray Burt Rutan as clown not the world class aviation engineer that he has proven himself to be.

this is a great amount of work, great video.

With the x15, Neil Armstrong ended up skipping off the atmosphere and overshooting his target trajectory. When he came in for a landing, the chase pilots asked how from the trees he was, and they responded with something along the lines of, "50 feet... on either side." So while everything did work out, that's still at least an x15 incident that's worth mentioning.

Your NOT an aeronautical engineer! Peat Siebold knows what he is doing you do not!

This was one of the best videos i've seen on this platform. Great job

22:20 that's not how that works. You spook customers by not disclosing it. What you do is you make an incident report, draft up recommendations for remedial action and then implement them. That shows that you learned from your mistakes and take safety seriously. Anybody makes mistakes, it's what comes next that decides your public image.

This is awesome, this is the content I've been searching for 😁 Definitely looking forward to the motor test video, any idea of the chamber pressure you'll see?

21:50 “Virgin Galactic hired a retired Boeing executive to conduct a safety review” Well that aged like sour milk 😂

Great video,not sure why I clicked on this but I learned alot,love the Mercury Redstone 1 failure

Hybrid motors have a horrible tendency to spall off chunks of fuel that can get wedged in the nozzle causing a massive thrust asymmetry or worse over-pressure of the motor casing.

Thank you for this vid. Great work.