Posted on 05/22/2019 9:26:23 AM PDT by rktman
Video footage of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon space capsule exploding on the ground during an April 20 test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was leaked online by the next day. Yet SpaceX and NASA are unacceptably dragging their feet in explaining this taxpayer-financed fiasco in the American space program and thus continued SpaceX’s worrisome undue influence on government.
SpaceX’s April 20 press release with its “anomaly” euphemism was immediately contradicted by images provided by a photographer from a local Florida publication covering a surfing festival on a beach near Cape Canaveral. In the telling photos, toxic reddish smoke clouds billow upwards from the space center. The accident is a poor omen for the Crew Dragon, in which NASA wants to transport astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
Such visual evidence helped prompt an April 24 editorial from the Orlando Sentinel, a Florida newspaper that often covers the space program in the region. “‘Anomaly’ is a vague industry buzzword that tells the public zilch about what happened to a program that the federal government is spending billions on,” the editorial criticized. “There’s been no press conference. No opportunity to ask questions of company executives. No detailed news releases. No photos or video of the damage.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The author is an idiot. That’s why they test things.
Spaceflight is hard.
Well, he ain't no Rocket Surgeon. Or Brain Scientist.
A slight improvement over C Stoff + T Stoff bi-propellant...
...but when the Crewed Dragon's sibling - the Cargo Dragon - attaches to the hyper-expensive and manned ISS on a regular basis...
...then NASA and SpaceX have a responsibility to better communicate the state of the investigation.
Prudence also requires that Cargo Dragon flights get delayed until it can be shown that the failure happened in a portion of the Crewed Dragon that does not share design or components with it.
(But what the hell do I know, I haven't killed 17 astronauts in preventable accidents.)
Exactly. That’s why tests are done. I don’t need the details of what went wrong. Americans just need to know that it has been fixed. And if it takes time to determine and fix the problem, so be it.
SpaceX didn’t kill Gus Grissom & Co. Neither did NASA. Accidents happens. Expensive equipment is destroyed and people die. This business in dangerous. But SpaceX has made incredible, inspiring breakthroughs that is resurrecting the American space program. Would the author prefer we depend 100% on Russia, as Obama did?
That's insulting.
To idiots.
Yup. Challenger and Columbia. I knew those two better than I would have liked.
Not sure that Space X is a fiasco. Unlike NASA, they haven’t burned men alive in a pure O2 environment.
Mistakes happen., SpaceX is a private company. They don’t have to disclose mistakes to anyone except the contacted company.
People should lighten up.
*ping*
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. "Taxpayer-financed fiasco" my ass.
“Testing discovers errors...
...but when the Crewed Dragon’s sibling - the Cargo Dragon - attaches to the hyper-expensive and manned ISS on a regular basis...
...then NASA and SpaceX have a responsibility to better communicate the state of the investigation.”
The system in question isn’t present on uncrewed Dragon capsules. It’s an emergency escape system.
Sorry for the late reply...
Yes, only Crew Dragon has the SuperDraco rocket engines, BUT both have Draco thrusters, and both Draco and SuperDraco thrusters pull on the same hypergolic fuel supply in the craft.
Hence it is not unreasonable to imagine that there are at least some shared components between Crew and Cargo variants when it comes to that hypergolic fuel supply.
Someone told me yesterday on Twitter that NASA and SpaceX had stated at a press conference for the Cargo Dragon launch a few weeks ago that they were satisfied by "working through the fault tree" that the same issue (still not truly known) that caused the explosion could not happen on Cargo Dragon. I guess that is the answer I was looking for. NASA and SpaceX really should have communicated that in a more obvious way.
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