LEX SMITS is quoted in todays Bloomberg piece on the Virgin Galactic Ltd spacecraft that broke apart last week. Twin booms on the tail of the spacecraft are made to rotate upward -- like the feathers on a badminton shuttlecock -- when the pilots want to slow and stabilize the ship as it comes down to Earth, Bloomberg reports. But the co-pilot reportedly unlocked the feathers as the plane reached Mach 1, the speed of sound. Doing so may have produced heavy loads capable of breaking the ship apart. “There would be a sudden, massive increase in drag on the aircraft,” Alexander Smits, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, told Bloomberg. “That obviously could lead to structural failure.”
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 16:55:20 +0000
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