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from the unscheduled-spontaneous-disassembly dept.
SpaceX held a press conference on Monday to discuss the results of a months-long investigation conducted by itself and NASA into an anomaly that took place during a static fire test in April. The investigation found that the "anomaly" that occurred during the test was the result of oxidizer mixing with the helium component of the SuperDraco rocket engine propellant system at very high pressure.
On April 20, SpaceX held an abort engine test for a prototype of its Crew Dragon vehicle (which had been flown previously for the uncrewed ISS mission). Crew Dragon is designed to be the first crew-carrying SpaceX spacecraft, and is undergoing a number of tests to prove to NASA its flight-readiness. After the first few tests proved successful, the test encountered a failure that was instantly visible, with an unexpected explosion that produced a plume of fire visible for miles around the testing site at its Landing Zone 1 facility in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Also at Ars Technica and Teslarati.
See also:
SpaceX's response to Crew Dragon explosion unfairly maligned by head of NASA
Update: In-Flight Abort Static Fire Test Anomaly Investigation
Previously: Reuters: Boeing Starliner Flights to the ISS Delayed by at Least Another 3 Months
SpaceX Crew Dragon Suffers "Anomaly" During Static Fire Test
Investigation Into Crew Dragon Incident Continues
[Ed Note - The article at Teslarati has a good description of the suspected failure.]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 16 2019, @01:33PM (1 child)
>U.S. could end its involvement with ISS. So no more Crew Dragon launches needed, unless private customers like Bigelow [space.com] step up.
Unless of course some other countries would like to ship passengers to the ISS in a well-certified vehicle.
>Starship will make Crew Dragon utterly obsolete.
Absolutely. Eventually. Assuming they can get it working as reliably as planned. But right now Starship is just a bunch of blueprints and early testing prototypes for the cargo version, it could easily be 10-20 years before they actually have a passenger-certified vehicle. Not that they necessarily need certification to carry non-government passengers, but governments will likely be the ones sending most passengers for the forseable future.
And frankly I think going through the certification process with Crew Dragon is probably good for them - they do have a tendency to advance extremely aggressively with safety being something of an afterthought. Starship might change that a bit since extremely high reuse is going to be needed for it to be viable, and unplanned energetic disassembly interferes with that. But all the more reason to get some practice designing and building to much higher reliability standards than they're accustomed to with their existing cargo vehicles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @07:20PM
Safety is not an afterthought. SpaceX's mission success rate is better than Delta, better than the Shuttle (but what isn't), better than Apollo.
The only thing that is different about SpaceX is that they admit their mistakes and they don't hide their risks under umpteen layers of bureaucracy. That is a strength, not a weakness.