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from the did-they-nickname-that-spacecraft-"Puff"? dept.
Investigation into Crew Dragon incident continues - SpaceNews.com
WASHINGTON — More than a month after a Crew Dragon spacecraft was destroyed in a test of its propulsion system, NASA and SpaceX investigators are still working to determine the cause of the accident and its implications for upcoming test flights.
In a May 28 presentation to the NASA Advisory Council's human exploration and operations committee, Kathy Lueders, manager of the commercial crew program at NASA, offered few updates on the progress of the investigation into the April 20 incident at a SpaceX pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
In that incident, SpaceX was testing both the Draco thrusters and larger SuperDraco abort thrusters in preparation for an in-flight abort test of the capsule that, at the time, was scheduled for the end of June. "An anomaly occurred during activation of the SuperDraco system," she said, but offered no details on what caused that anomaly.
[...] With the investigation ongoing, Lueders said the dates of both the in-flight abort test and the Demo-2 mission are under review. Assembly of the Demo-2 capsule continues, she said, although she said workers are keeping open the vehicle's propulsion system in case they need to make modifications as a result of the investigation. "They're making progress in a lot of the other areas while trying to keep, most particularly in the prop area, access to the systems that may need to be modified," she said.
She didn't give an indication of when that investigation will be completed. "You don't push your anomaly investigation team too quick," she said, stressing the importance for them to be "methodical" while working through all parts of the fault tree of potential causes.
(Score: 5, Informative) by KilroySmith on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:30AM
>>> Musk wanted reusability.
Well, I doubt very much that the use of hydrazine had anything to do with reusability - I doubt that anyone has any need to reuse a crew capsule that's had to use it's emergency escape system. And hydrazine is going to seriously compromise the ability to quickly reuse capsules. No, if reusability was the goal, then solid rocket motors is where its at.
What Musk wanted was the ability to soft-land on, well, land. Throttling the liquid fuel engines would have given him that as a standard landing technique, rather than splashing the capsule in the ocean. It's not the current plan, and I don't know if Crew Dragon still has that capability, but the hydrazine engines are a legacy of that desire, not reusability.