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SpaceX is no stranger to delays. The private space firm headed by Elon Musk has pushed back is launch schedule several times in the last few years after rockets have been lost. Now, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says there may be an issue with the Falcon 9 rocket that delays the expected launch of the first manned mission in 2018.
The report from the GAO (just a preliminary release for now) cites issues with the turboblades used in Falcon 9 rockets. These are the components that move fuel from the tanks to engines. The blades apparently have a tendency to develop cracks, which could cause catastrophic failure if they develop or worsen during a launch.
According to NASA acting administrator Robert Lightfoot (who also has an amazing name) says the agency and SpaceX have been aware of the issue for months (or possibly years). NASA expressed concern to SpaceX that the turboblade cracks presented too great a risk to launch manned missions. Cracks have been found in the turboblades as recently as September 2016.
SpaceX says it has been conducting extensive testing on the Falcon 9 rocket and believes it to be safe. It has made changes to the design of the turboblades in an effort to mitigate the cracking issues. Although, the company may still undertake a full redesign of the blades depending on the upcoming GAO report. If that happens, the manned launch will almost certainly be delayed.
Source:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/243883-problems-falcon-9-design-delay-manned-missions
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 06 2017, @09:21PM
The shuttle had multiple intrinsic safety failures _despite_ having baked in man-rating from the start
They baked in political deals from the start. Hard to have a SRB failure if you don't have SRB although you don't get the Utah vote without SRBs so we gotta have SRBs even if they kill people.
The insulation deaths were the same way. The ET spray on foam is environmentally negligible but they couldn't use the good stuff because it looks bad to be anti-environment on TV, so instead they killed a bunch of people by using stuff that is more environmental but falls off and cracks heatshields. Sure we littered parts of the shuttle and parts of the astronauts all over Texas but thank god we didn't use environmentally unfriendly insulation, that's what really matters in a human-life space program, not mere human lives.
You have to balance SpaceX is doing questionable things vs NASA just plain old sucks.