Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6424927" data-attributes="member: 177">I hate to say this - but it seems like folks are going out of their way to question competence.  Is anyone here an aeronautical engineer?  If not, who are we to question the competence of someone who is?Yes, SpaceShipTwo has a rocket engine.  Did you miss the part where they have already found that engine and the fuel tanks, intact, with no signs of breach or burn through?  The primary feared failure modes of the engine have thereby already been ruled out.  The thing may have had some vibration issues, which will have to be looked at.  Everyone in the space business will want to know what went wrong - finding rocket scientists to help with analysis won't be hard.You guys speak as if the engineering is something kept within the heads of a small number of individuals, difficult to extract r understand. That's not how modern engineering works.  Modern engineering is well documented - it is made to be passed around between people in Scaled Composites, so those people can work with it and on it.  It is tested, and simulated, and instrumented with sensors for testing phases.  It is set up specifically for an aeronautical engineer to access and understand it!And you guys are so focused on the engineering.  The engineering itself is the simple part.  That is numbers, hard science.  Noting where the engineering failed is *not* the same as finding the root cause of the accident.  The real ultimate root cause is the answer to the question, "How did you get to the point where this physical failure occurred?"  This is not an engineering question, but a *process* question.  What was the testing process that let that engineering through to flight?  What was the training process - was a training failure responsible for the co-pilot unlocking the feathering system early?  Did that contribute to the destruction of the aircraft?  Was the company under too great a pressure to test and deliver, such that steps were rushed, or corners cut?Those aren't questions of engineering, but of organizations - and organizational analysis is an area in which the NTSB is very much an expert authority.</blockquote>

Verification