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Makes sense from the images. If you look at the picture of the incident, eg on http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Probe_of_US_spaceship_crash_may_take_year_999.html and now treat SS2 as being upside down and backwards you've got the engine still firing at the top and the tail booms deployed either side. The feathered configuration is supposed to hold the nose up during re-entry so the base of the ship is maximising the cross section, deploying while the engine is running is lilely to send you into a very tight loop the loop.