White Knight Two Gear Collapse

Stock photo courtesy of Virgin Galactic. Photo does not
depict the White Knight Vehicle during the flight 37
landing gear incident.

While Scaled Composites has not yet published the details of White Knight Two test flights 36 and 37, apparently flight 37 ended with a port side landing gear problem and apparent collapse (see photo below). The left fuselage on WK2 that contains the port side landing gear is not currently equipped to carry passengers or pilots. Scaled has provided very few details of the incident but has referred to the incident as minor and that there were no injuries to the crew. They also report that it was not a captive carry flight and as such, SS2 was not involved.

Given the fact that they seem to be practicing for the first glide flight of SS2, it is likely that they were performing various sorts of SS2 approaches and perhaps discovered a weakness in the WK2 landing gear design. If this is the case, then it is a good thing that this happened on a non-SS2 carrying flight. It is also a good thing that they have flown 34 non-SS2 test flights to discover these weaknesses. Hopefully the solution to the problem will not involve a major re-design of the landing gear.

Photo courtesy of FlightGlobal.com.

Given Scaled's proven ability to make rapid changes and repairs to their vehicles, it seems likely that barring a major re-design, this incident will present not much more than a short delay in the SS2 development process.

If this incident shows nothing else though, it does show the advantage of a 4 post landing gear design. The failure of any one still leaves three. I assume that elevator, aileron, and rudder authority are sufficient to keep the airframe from contacting the ground at all but the lowest airspeeds.