Commercial Crew - Discussion Thread 1

[QuantumG]

Do you grasp the cost of losing a crew on Soyuz in a political sense?

Not a lot?

[Comga]

do you grasp the cost of failure in a political sense?

Don’t make this personal
Don’t assume your perspective is superior
What says that this delay will make failure less likely?
The NASA people close to the work indicated things were acceptable for next month, although scheduling would push it out a bit.
The Administrator says they are months away but assures everyone that the delay will be less than a year.
Really?

[John-H]

Do you grasp the cost of losing a crew on Soyuz in a political sense?

Not a lot?

What is the political cost _to NASA_  if one of the many Russian Soyuz launches fails?  How about if the first flight of the US  Commercial Crew fails?   

John

[QuantumG]

What is the political cost _to NASA_  if one of the many Russian Soyuz launches fails?

Close to zero.

How about if the first flight of the US  Commercial Crew fails?   

To NASA? Not as close to zero, but not by much.

NASA doesn't matter. No-one is going to change their vote because of another "national tragedy". They'll shed some tears, rewatch the explosion videos and then go back to complaining about whatever politician they don't like this week.

[saliva_sweet]

The pendulum has swung the other way. "no-go" fever, analysis paralysis, probably other terms have been coined for this phenomenon. NASA has obviously failed to execute on the big congressional mandates: SHLV and crewed launch capability for US. It absolutely is a cultural issue and requires an investigation and very serious thinking.

[TripleSeven]

Do you grasp the cost of losing a crew on Soyuz in a political sense?

Not a lot?

What is the political cost _to NASA_  if one of the many Russian Soyuz launches fails?  How about if the first flight of the US  Commercial Crew fails?   

John

UNLESS Americans are killed none for Soyuz.  there are no American domestic forces in work with the Soyuz program...and its clear NASA has near zero authority over the Russian program...(or the Russians care to even treat NASA as a partner)

Commercial crew is in my view different.  there are probably differences if the accident is fatal or not...but if a vehicle is lost or even just fails to get the crew to the station...there are forces inside of NASA and in Congress (and in aerospace|) that do not care for the commercial contracting method of operations...they are very powerful (they keep SLS afloat) and they will react aggressively

I have no idea how the Trump administration will react.  But it will mean, at the least far more NASA oversight of the program.  in my view

[TripleSeven]

do you grasp the cost of failure in a political sense?

Don’t make this personal
Don’t assume your perspective is superior
What says that this delay will make failure less likely?
The NASA people close to the work indicated things were acceptable for next month, although scheduling would push it out a bit.
The Administrator says they are months away but assures everyone that the delay will be less than a year.
Really?

it was not personal I asked a question.

"what says this delay will make failure less likey?"

it all DEPENDS on why the delay was taken ie what reasons prompted it...and if they were reasonable what action was done to correct or address them

AS I said, I initially thought the delay was completely unjustified.  I no longer think that.  that belief is based on what I have heard and been told by people very close to the NASA and contractor side.

So much so that as I said I pulled an op ed that was going to print this coming Sunday in a major Washington based  US newspaper.

Safety is thing...the most important aspect of it is listening to well voiced concerns raised by thoughtful people.  NASA has a history of not doing that.  I am tilting to the possibility that they did here

[TripleSeven]

And we were under six weeks to launch.....

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Target Test Flight Dates

Marie Lewis Posted on November 21, 2018

(snip)
Test Flight Planning Dates:
Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): March 2019
Boeing Pad Abort Test: Between OFT and CFT
Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): August 2019
SpaceX Demo-1 (uncrewed): January 7, 2019
SpaceX In-Flight Abort Test: Between Demo-1 and Demo-2
SpaceX Demo-2 (crewed): June 2019
(snip)
First operational mission: August 2019
Second operational mission: December 2019

And now we have Bridenstine throwing major shade on the schedule only 8 days later:

Bridenstine says that "there is a very low probability" that DM-1 occurs in January.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/29/nasa-program-send-astronauts-space-station-facing-more-delays/2143813002/

So what changed in the last week?
We have known for some tme that the parachute reef cutters are coming from a new supplier without flight heritage.
This does put some finite added risk into the DM-1 flight.
The parachute system is significantly modified from the 3 chute Cargo Dragon version which has something like 16 for 16 successes.  However it has been tested ~10 times, although I don't know how many included the new reef cutter.

Why, again, did NASA insist of adding a 4th parachute?
And won't NASA let SpaceX assume the risk of a parachute failure on DM-1, at the potential cost of having to do it again, as they continue their certification for DM-2?

Does anyone else remember and feel like Charlie Brown truing to kick the football.?
Imagine Bridenstine in the role of Lucy.....

do you grasp the cost of failure in a political sense?

Do you grasp the cost of losing a crew on Soyuz in a political sense?

I think I have the possible metrics down well.  it all depends on how thenotion of the Russian space program "collapsing" plays out

soyuz is a mature system. the only reasons for a loss of crew is collapse or failure in production control.

that is not true of Dragon2 or CST

[rockets4life97]

From my perspective, tests are good and partial failure in tests is better. You learn from tests. DM-1 is a test flight. I'd be way more interested in multiple test flights if there is a concern for safety, then continually pushing off the full-up tests.

[freddo411]

AS I said, I initially thought the delay was completely unjustified.  I no longer think that.  that belief is based on what I have heard and been told by people very close to the NASA and contractor side.

So much so that as I said I pulled an op ed that was going to print this coming Sunday in a major Washington based  US newspaper.

Safety is thing...the most important aspect of it is listening to well voiced concerns raised by thoughtful people.  NASA has a history of not doing that.  I am tilting to the possibility that they did here

Whoa.  If you are going to say this, I'd appreciate it if you'd fill in just a bit of detail in L2

I think part of problem with this implied delay is that Bridenstine could have included a very brief explanation of any supposed issues.  Something like:  "We are still looking at the reef cutters because one of them did not work fully during launch $XYZ".  The fact that he did not leaves open the possibility that the delay is simply manufactured for other reasons.

I urge you to fill in some detail too, for the same reason.

[Alexphysics]

Interesting discussion on facebook in this comment thread

Specially with this comment

the reason you haven’t seen anything on here/twitter about them doing parachute drop tests recently is because there was a chute failure and that test article no longer exists after a ballistic impact with the desert floor.

I wonder how legitimate is this statement but certainly would be one hint at those "issues". What I certainly don't like about this approach from Bridenstine is that he is only saying "no" but not saying why and when he is asked he only says that "there have been issues". The question is "What issues?!". If what this guy said on facebook is true, then hell, yeah, I'd say that's a good reason to stop a few months more and take a look at it but saying "there have been issues" without giving some perspective of how bad they are is useless.

[Joffan]

Interesting discussion on facebook in this comment thread

Specially with this comment

the reason you haven’t seen anything on here/twitter about them doing parachute drop tests recently is because there was a chute failure and that test article no longer exists after a ballistic impact with the desert floor.

I wonder how legitimate is this statement but certainly would be one hint at those "issues". What I certainly don't like about this approach from Bridenstine is that he is only saying "no" but not saying why and when he is asked he only says that "there have been issues". The question is "What issues?!". If what this guy said on facebook is true, then hell, yeah, I'd say that's a good reason to stop a few months more and take a look at it but saying "there have been issues" without giving some perspective of how bad they are is useless.

I don't see any support whatsoever across the internet for that claim of a parachute failure so bad it resulted in destruction of the load. And I suspect that if any evidence does come forth to support Gregory Dean's coyly-worded statement, it will be of an entirely unrelated parachute test nothing to do with SpaceX.

(note that the Facebook group is application-only membership, so not everyone here will be able to look at the conversation).

[TripleSeven]

AS I said, I initially thought the delay was completely unjustified.  I no longer think that.  that belief is based on what I have heard and been told by people very close to the NASA and contractor side.

So much so that as I said I pulled an op ed that was going to print this coming Sunday in a major Washington based  US newspaper.

Safety is thing...the most important aspect of it is listening to well voiced concerns raised by thoughtful people.  NASA has a history of not doing that.  I am tilting to the possibility that they did here

Whoa.  If you are going to say this, I'd appreciate it if you'd fill in just a bit of detail in L2

I think part of problem with this implied delay is that Bridenstine could have included a very brief explanation of any supposed issues.  Something like:  "We are still looking at the reef cutters because one of them did not work fully during launch $XYZ".  The fact that he did not leaves open the possibility that the delay is simply manufactured for other reasons.

I urge you to fill in some detail too, for the same reason.

I dont have the full story from NASA's  perspective and I am to far away from Houston to get it as people are reluctant to say  some things in emails these days, even private ones. (I'll be back on the ranch in January but right now PBN certification and 77X stuff has got me stuck)     BUT as I always do with an op ed or an article or whatever that is going into professional print under "my name" I circulated it to people who I trust and who can tell me "yes or no" I am comfortable with how you used what I told you

and everything I got back from "the usual suspects" in Seattle, Houston and some blue suit friends I have who hang out at SpaceX told me "be careful with this one" and why and so I Pulled it

Safety is a hard thing....I am USN NAtops and FAA Safety trained, have been involved in many Aircraft investigations and the trick is that if reasonable people raise reasonable objections then as a manager you are a fool if you dont investigate them

Now dont take that as I have all that much "awe" for NASA safety culture.  its literally killed 14 astronauts and they have had some near misses at the station (including on EVA's).  the old line "anyone can stop a launch" that was thrown around during the CAIB is BS.   but the friends I have in commercial spaceflight at NASA I do take quite seriously and I always take the Seattle safety office of my former company... seriously

and I think that there are some serious people trying to raise some serious concerns...and this was one method of addressing them.

I know that two triggers for this (on each side) was that few at Boeing liked the results of the thruster test...nothing went as predicted or modeled and there are some worrisome issues with the chutes on the DRagon series performance.

I DONT KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT EITHER ISSUE to make a judgment but people who I trust are concerned...and that one takes seriously

For what it is worth...I am told part of the issue at both companies is that in the past people have raised issues about things that eventually "bit" the company ...and were simply ignored.   

that is the thing that gets people's attention...aka when something is brought to safeties attention and its simply ignored...thats a red flag.

as an example...everything that my old employeer is finding at Lion air...has nothing to do with the airplane or the MCAPS but everything to do with massive safety violations and people who objected to what was happening being told to "go away" 

you cannot do that

[whitelancer64]

adding a 4th parachute?

Crew Dragon is significantly heavier than Cargo Dragon. If using a 3 parachute system and one failed, the water impact speed would be too high. 4th parachute allows one to fail and splashdown speed to remain within tolerance.

[kevinof]

I just read the Facebook thread - there is nothing on there that actually has anything concrete about a chute failure. It's all just "maybe", "might have" etc. In fact it refers back to this site about an issue with the chute where is was within parameters but not perfect (Think Woods had the inside track on that).

There is just one person making statements without any backup or citation.

I call BS on this one.

[Alexphysics]

I call BS on this one.

Yeah, I think it is most likely BS. The writer of that statement is a former NASA intern but beyond that there is no credit to his words and a total parachute failiure would seem very bad to not have broken into the usual space news, specially from journalists that lean more to the side of SpaceX's competition. We all remember how their headlines were when that issue at the engine test stand in McGregor or with Zuma, imagine how tasty a total parachute failiure would look like to them...

[Roy_H]

do you grasp the cost of failure in a political sense?

There in lies the problem. Politicians view themselves as being more important than anybody else and their views have more weight even if they are contrary to engineers, scientists, and people with common sense.

Edit: I guess I feel the need to expand on this. I believe that politicians should give NASA goals like explore the moon or asteroids etc. And then step back and let NASA do its job without trying to micro-manage NASA.

[Roy_H]

Everything I have read points to an extremely small issue being blown out of proportion regards the "parachute failure". But I have to give TrippleSeven his due, if there really is a serious issue, I wish NASA would make it public and quickly so this divisive debate can be put to bed.

[matthewkantar]

Everything I have read points to an extremely small issue being blown out of proportion regards the "parachute failure". But I have to give TrippleSeven his due, if there really is a serious issue, I wish NASA would make it public and quickly so this divisive debate can be put to bed.

If they had a serious issue, it would have been made public immediately. All they've got is innuendo.

Matthew

[TripleSeven]

do you grasp the cost of failure in a political sense?

There in lies the problem. Politicians view themselves as being more important than anybody else and their views have more weight even if they are contrary to engineers, scientists, and people with common sense.

Edit: I guess I feel the need to expand on this. I believe that politicians should give NASA goals like explore the moon or asteroids etc. And then step back and let NASA do its job without trying to micro-manage NASA.

Politicans good and bad are responsive to what the people want...more than engineers etc...because that is their life blood...and the people at least of the US "dont" have a reason to support human spaceflight period...much less programs that 1) kill people and 2) kill people for reasons that turn out to be "almost" carelessness.

Almost as many people are alive today who were alive when Apollo 11 happened as not...AND the "nots" dont seem to care much about space exploration other than the occassional robot.  And that seems to be world wide.

I think that can be reversed but politicans are quite sensitive to that...when there is disaster...