That’s not a statement, but clearly is a legitimate question. If so, he paid with his life.

Also if so, it’s a pretty easy thing to fix. But it still doesn’t explain why they deployed without the command to do so. And we still don’t really know how well the engine performed, or what kind of vibration environment it will provide the vehicle and passengers. At least publicly.

[Update a few minutes later]

It strikes me as ironic, and a demonstration of one of the major points of my book, that the two main features of the vehicle implemented in the name of safety (hybrid motor, and feathering wings) may have actually made the vehicle more dangerous and less operable. Lynx will be a much simpler system.

This comment was made in the weekend context, when most reasonably assumed that the engine had caused the disaster:

The decision to change the fuel may have been behind the crash. Experts questioned whether pressure from investors might have been a factor in decisions by Sir Richard Branson and Scaled Composites, the spacecraft’s designers, to pursue what many considered to be a flawed design.

“If Sir Richard wants to move forward with his business, he needs to go back to the drawing board,” said Mr Simberg, the author of Safe is Not an Option. “Many in the industry, including me, have been concerned about Virgin’s propellant system for years.”

Obviously, I expect them to continue down the current path now, absent some new engine concern. But my warnings were never that much about safety (though as I wrote on Saturday, the safety of hybrids has been dramatically overhyped), but whether or not it was a good engine from a business standpoint, in terms of performance, operability, turnaround, cost, and getting the vehicle to market soon. Those concerns have not gone away.

[Update a while later]

A pretty comprehensive story, including history, over at Popular Mechanics. He’s not sanguine about the prospects for the vehicle, though (like me) doesn’t see it as a setback for the industry itself.

[Update a while later]

What does this mean for New Mexico? A long but useful backgrounder.

[Update early afternoon]

Someone over at Arocket found a video of a previous SS2 flight in which feathers were unlocked ten seconds into the burn (as opposed to nine seconds on Friday). So if it was early, it wasn’t very. Not obvious pilot error yet.