Posted on 07/16/2019 6:00:11 AM PDT by BenLurkin
You get what you pay for, and sometimes not even then. I don’t mind NASA contracting out to SpaceX, but if anyone believes that they are going to provide safe, reliable human space transportation at a fraction of the cost of previous NASA manned programs, well, reality check. Space is hard. Human space even harder. No free rides.
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Yes, it’s hard. That’s why SpaceX does extensive testing and they caught this problem before anyone got killed. They got lucky, too, but they put themselves in a position to be lucky.
I do. Space is hard, and so are a lot of other things. I happen to believe in the free market over government.
Hopefully SpaceX hires less H1Bs than Boeing. We all seen what happens when unqualified software engineers work on aircraft control systems.
That’s the part that people don’t get. SpaceX is not free market. Its govt subsidized. Just like Tesla. You just don’t hear about it. Musk is a big hustler like his buddy Obama. He has built an impressive company with good talent in SpaceX, but hardly free market. So call it what it is. He another government contractor at this point.
Us geezers (which I’m not) can push a button at the pump (which I don’t) in my area and have someone come out and do at least the first part. :-)
Wow!
“SpaceX’s understanding is that the high-speed slug of dense NTO was traveling so fast and at such a high pressure that, by impacting the titanium check valve, it quite literally broke the valve and may have chemically ignited the metal, thus introducing a slug of burning NTO into the liberated NTO system itself – effectively a match tossed into a powder keg.”
I can hear Ronald Reagan saying this real fast, just like in Desperate Journey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TkHs0pVHFI
NASA never built a rocket. They assembled them, launched them, even blew them up themselves...but they never built one: They were ALL subbed out (save for the V2s).
“Except that contains parts. The more parts the bigger chance of trouble.”
“Any part you leave out can’t break.” Glenn Curtis
Check valve?
Other than Apollo 1 and 13...
Remember the tragic Apollo 1 fire. If I recall the investigation showed a lot of problems. Biggest being using pure oxygen but also revealed rushed designs, a system that awarded work to low bidders and shoddy work from subcontractors. It resulted in a massive overall and rebuilding of procedures and systems. If the fire wouldn’t have happened it’s unlikely the moon missions would have been successful
“...SpaceX is approximately 80% of the way through what is known as the fault tree...”
Somebody notify Boeing!
Thanks fieldmarshaldj.
The V-2’s were not used by NASA, only by the Army. And most of them were subbed out from Mittelwerk.
Did SpaceX discover a new explosive ?
All true. Which is why I only point out that SpaceX is no different than a Lockheed or Rockwell or Boeing...except NASA was forced by the Obama government to turn away from its traditional contractors and fund startups. The reason NASA did not want to do so was because they had decades of experience ad lessons learned with the traditional contractors and new things have unexpected costs. But I agree shaking things up every once in a while can bring new ideas and efficiencies.
Again, just be honest about what it is and what it will cost. Musk is just out to get tax payer money. He built SpaceX by inspiring millennial engineers with very unrealistic expectations like going to Mars on the cheap.
Of course costs can, with competition incentives and technological advancement, come down. All prior human space transport was privately built, contracted by government; all SpaceX does is provide a new private contractor leveraging competition and innovation.
Remember 3 astronauts incinerated during a grounded capsule test (in the era you implicitly laud). At least nobody DIED during the Crew Dragon capsule explosion.
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