Kermas Sub-Orbital Space Tourism Vehicle :: Fully Recoverable Boosters
Spacecraft Accident Report
Investigation page 7
At 1 minute and 9 seconds of the Mission Elapsed Time, the third event of the chain was triggered.
While trying to fly level instead of starting a gentle climb to take account of the lower airspeed at takeoff, the Pilot raised the spacecraft'S nose too high, resulting on the heavy and slow aircraft to stall at a dangerously low altitude.
Later investigations cleared the Pilot of wrongdoing. Again, the overriding of the FADEC associated to a undisclosed change on the spacecraft lead to terrible consequences. It was discovered that, due a change of the Center of Mass - slightly moved ahead on the spacecraft due the extra equipment installed to allow recovering of the boosters - the engineering demanded that the middle aileron, originally meant to be only used on roll, should also act on pitch. Again, the FADEC was programmed to abstract this change from the Pilots. Without the FADEC, the Pilot pulled the pressure she was thinking to be necessary to raise the nose using only the inner ailerons as she was trained to - and by the time she realized the misbehaviour, the stall was already irremediable.
Transcription from the flight recorder:
T+0y,0d,00:01:09 Pilot Dioly Kerman: __ Something wrong, she's not behaving...
T+0y,0d,00:01:10 Copilot Leadrin Kerman: __ STALL! STALL!
