WaPo Article Says NASA Critical of SpaceX re. Load and Go

[TomH]

According to this article, NASA has criticized SpaceX for planning to load densified prop while astronauts are already aboard D2.

The article goes on to discuss LOC predictions, as well as statements from several experts as to whether NASA has become too risk averse or SpaceX not risk averse enough.

[envy887]

Don't see anything new here; this has already been discussed endlessly in other threads.

[Nomadd]

 The risk of loading crew onto a fully fueled rocket is not negligable either, and if something happened then, the LAS wouldn't be able to save the flight crew or the ground crew. The extremely low incidences of actual events means your risk numbers contain a lot of guesses. It's not that cut and dried.

[EnigmaSCADA]

I've always wondered what the difference was between loading people on the top of a fully loaded bomb vs loading a bomb underneath a fully loaded crew capsule. 6 = 0.5  * 12? If you do it right, they both work.

[TomH]

Don't see anything new here; this has already been discussed endlessly in other threads.

Fully agree. What's new is Bezos' newspaper dramatizing it so flagrantly to the public. That's the part I find somewhat troubling.

[John Alan]

I'll remind everyone to look at the article author's background, book authored, and his current employer...

[su27k]

For all its push-the-envelope swagger, SpaceX says it is serious about flying people safely and is going to great lengths to study every aspect of the vehicle, down to individual valves, so that it will meet and surpass the 1-in-270 chance-of-death metric, said Benji Reed, the director of SpaceX’s commercial crew program.

This part seems to be new, assuming it's not baseless bravado...

As for the author, his book is pretty good, pro Blue Origin for sure, but not at all anti-SpaceX.

[Chris Bergin]

Two things.

1) Mainstream media, which is completely different to a site like this, can be treated as team sports. Objectivity is dead. Click on Fox News and CNN one after each other on a morning and you'll see it bright as day. Sadly, the side effect of articles like the above (and Zuma, the ULA sniper and such) is it makes SpaceX more insular and as they grow they bring more and more people in who don't understand the media and we all get tarred with the same brush. Sure, we've got some immunity to it via our history, but that's the trend.

2) Some posts removed that said "Also in the Chicago Tribune. Also in the Daily Hound!" <---no, it's the same article. That's how the mass media works. It's called syndication. Original journalism is dying (costs/online ad revenue is rock bottom) and now a lot of these papers no longer have offices full of writers, they are full of IT people, all tasked with filling their sites and papers out of the pool of syndicated AP and other content. Think of it as "We pay X amount, less than the salary of one journalist, to copy and paste 100s of syndicated news articles!" It's why the remaining original mass media go after sensational news, because they make money by mass selling the content on a network. And also, it gets repeated in social media, especially by those who may disagree with it.

But hey, most of you support it by default by clicking on it. You may say "I mainly love sites like NSF, original and objective news content!" But 99.99 percent of people who will go through this site today (including news site, open forum, guests) don't support this site via L2 - and this site costs four figures per month to keep online - so you've got no grounds to complain about it.

Sorry, that turned into a rant! But yep.
Mass Media: "HEADLINE. Made you look. Click on me!"
Reader: "Oh wow, that's not a great article, so many holes in it and may be biased! I must share that with everyone!"
Mass Media "Thanks very much! "

PS No, Boeing wouldn't have done this. They are too busy promoting their own things (over promoting in some cases).

PPS This thread won't last long if all you're going to post is "OMG Bezos wrote this!" Trimmed some more.

[kerogre256]

It was discussed hundreds of times but from my point of view
1. If rocked explode when full of fuel during boarding thay have 0 chance to survide.
2.If rocked explode during fuel loading when thay are on board of dragon they at least have chance to survide becose escape system of dragon.

[Welsh Dragon]

But 99.99 percent of people who will go through this site today (including news site, open forum, guests) don't support this site via L2 - and this site costs four figures per month to keep online - so you've got no grounds to complain about it.

Ah yes, because everyone has the spare money to join L2. I get your point, but you might want to rephrase this. I think a lot more people would join L2 if they could afford it.

[eric z]

 Whoa, time out! I am broke as the dickens; worried about how we keep paying the mortgage in another couple years at our age, etc. BUT an L2 subscription is the BEST value on the Internet, assuming you are a Space Freak in the first place. I don't want any casual visitors to get the wrong impression about that!
 More to the topic, NASA's butt, along with their or anyone Else's astronauts, is on-the-line if anything goes wrong on the pad. SpaceX can skirt the issue a bit, cutting edge- blah, blah; but NASA can't...They got to get this right. As we get closer to the launches, Boeing, too, there will be all kinds of issues popping -out, big and small. Hopefully I think most of the bigger ones have been addressed, but who knows? It's important to get this all right.
 I have thought, and maybe stated somewhere, that these "Commercial" flights [which is a silly term, IMHO] should all have a mixed-crew from the beginning. A NASA astronaut as commander and at least one rep from the company supplying the capsule. That would tell the public this isn't ALL just NASA, but a new-er way of doing things- After all NASA isn't allowed to make $ transporting hundreds of love-couples up to their Bigelow Honeymoon Suites!

[Nomadd]

 Good rant. I'd feel a little guity about snagging the lifetime membership in the early days, but I can't.
 Maybe there are a hundred conspiracies to make Elon Inc. look bad. Who cares? If that's what you need, I believe CNN and Fox comments sections are available.
 Chris might think I'm crazy, but I've seen a remarkable respect for the sanctity of L2 information in other places. Something not all that common now days. If it's not worth the cost of a McDonald's Happy Meal every month to you..... (Fill in the blank).

[launchwatcher]

The risk of loading crew onto a fully fueled rocket is not negligable either, and if something happened then, the LAS wouldn't be able to save the flight crew or the ground crew. The extremely low incidences of actual events means your risk numbers contain a lot of guesses. It's not that cut and dried.

As I understand it, the other side of the argument is that the risk of the rocket going kaboom on the pad is perceived to be significantly greater while propellant is actively being loaded vs. when the vehicle is fully fueled and merely sitting there being topped off.      The weight of the empty vehicle is a tiny fraction of the takeoff weight, so forces on the structure change dramatically during the loading process.   And while that's happening the structure is cooling and contracting -- possibly unevenly -- as the chilled/cryogenic propellant hits the tanks.   So there's a lot going on that isn't all that visible.   Underscoring this, the one on-pad explosion in recent memory was during propellant loading, not after.

That said, load-and-go is clearly safer for the ground crew (since they can be far away when propellant loading starts).    But it's not clear if it's safer for the passengers/flight crew. 

[Coastal Ron]

I've always wondered what the difference was between loading people on the top of a fully loaded bomb vs loading a bomb underneath a fully loaded crew capsule. 6 = 0.5  * 12? If you do it right, they both work.

I'm not sure I understand what NASA ASAP is concerned about, because they should be concerned about which process ensures no loss of life when things go wrong.

For instance, the worst case scenario with the process Boeing will be using results in the loss of the flight crew and the minimum ground crew required to load the flight crew into the spacecraft. So that is likely at least six people (4 flight crew + 2 ground personnel).

The worst case scenario with the SpaceX preferred process is that up to four flight crew may have some injuries from an unannounced LAS flight and landing.

But from the article we know that NASA internally is concerned that they have become too risk-averse, both due to internal forces (personal memories of Shuttle accidents) and certainly due to external forces (politics, press, public, etc.). The only way to deal with that is to not lose a human life when the (inevitable) accident happens.

[Jim]

For instance, the worst case scenario with the process Boeing will be using results in the loss of the flight crew and the minimum ground crew required to load the flight crew into the spacecraft. So that is likely at least six people (4 flight crew + 2 ground personnel).

The worst case scenario with the SpaceX preferred process is that up to four flight crew may have some injuries from an unannounced LAS flight and landing.

Risk management involves more than just outcomes or consequence.  The likelihood or probably of problem happening has a equal role.

Problems occurring during active propellant loading are much more likely to occur than during stable replenish.

And the worst case scenario for SpaceX is also loss of the flight crew.    The LAS is not 100% perfect.


Again, amazing people playing up their side and not telling the whole story.

[deruch]

I've always wondered what the difference was between loading people on the top of a fully loaded bomb vs loading a bomb underneath a fully loaded crew capsule. 6 = 0.5  * 12? If you do it right, they both work.

I'm not sure I understand what NASA ASAP is concerned about, because they should be concerned about which process ensures no loss of life when things go wrong.

I think their concern is that they aren't happy about any system/operation that relies on the effectiveness of the LAS to save lives.  Basically, their mindset is that when considering risk you should treat the vehicles/operations as though the LAS didn't exist at all.  It's there for when there are no other options on ways to mitigate a failure.  But, if there's a way to increase safety without relying on the LAS then that is their preference.  As has been discussed/debated on this site many times, that's a reasonable position given their role but such a conservative position may in fact decrease overall safety when considering all involved parties.  However, whether it does or not is highly sensitive to the actual numbers used to make a determination--number of individuals at risk, length of time exposed to risk, and statistical likelihoods of various failures.  And since there isn't enough data (i.e. too few launches) to be able to make an actual determination on the true statistical likelihood of failures and we don't know any of the other numbers involved (besides 4 astronauts in the capsule), every time this topic gets brought up we go around in circles arguing about which method is better. 

[abaddon]

Is there anything at all new here other than WaPo is reporting it?

[Rocket Science]

Becoming noisy, must be getting close to "Go Time"!!

[Chris Bergin]

Is there anything at all new here other than WaPo is reporting it?

Nope.

Locked.