Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft designers failed to anticipate the risk that pilots might trigger the brakes too early, leaving the rocket vulnerable to the kind of error that caused last year’s fatal crash, investigators said.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday focused on pilot training in a hearing into the Oct. 31 accident that grounded Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture months before it was to start taking customers to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed in the crash, which occurred after he prematurely unlocked a braking mechanism.
The failure by Scaled Composites LLC, the craft’s designer, to consider and protect against the human mistake was the probable cause of the accident, the NTSB determined.
“Humans will screw up anything if you give them enough opportunity,” Robert Sumwalt, a safety board member and former commercial airline pilot, said at a Tuesday meeting to determine the cause of the crash. “It’s important to anticipate errors.”
