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An editorial by Jason Rhian discusses NASA's handling of the Orb-3 (Orbital Sciences) and CRS-7 (SpaceX) accidents. Both were Commercial Resupply Service missions to the International Space Station. SpaceX intends to fly NASA astronauts using Falcon rockets within the next couple of years:
A recent post appearing on the blog Parabolic Arc noted NASA will not be releasing a public report on the findings of the SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-7 explosion that resulted in the loss of the launch vehicle, the Dragon spacecraft, and the roughly $118 million in supplies and hardware the spacecraft was carrying. The post also notes that the Orb-3 accident was handled differently by NASA, but were the two accidents so distinct as to warrant two totally dissimilar approaches?
The premise of the Parabolic Arc report was somewhat inaccurate. NASA didn't refuse to issue a public report; the truth is, no public report was ever produced. NASA officials noted on Wednesday, July 19, that, as the agency was not required to create such a report, one was not generated.
When asked about the discrepancy between the two incidents, NASA officials noted that the Orb-3 failure had occurred on a NASA launch pad (at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Pad-0A – which is managed by Virginia Space, not NASA). Whereas the Falcon 9 CRS-7 mission had launched from SpaceX's own pad (SLC-40, which is not their pad it was leased to them by the U.S. Air Force) on a commercial flight licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Therefore, NASA was not required to produce a report on the CRS-7 accident. However, Orb-3 was also licensed by the FAA, making this distinction tenuous.
The problem submitted by SpaceX as the root cause of the CRS-7 accident was a failed strut in the rocket's second stage. SpaceX stated that it had fixed the problem and, for all intents and purposes, the matter was dropped.
Fast forward 14 months and another Falcon 9, with the $185 million Amos-6 spacecraft, exploded while just sitting on the pad, taking the rocket, its payload, and some of the ground support facilities at Canaveral's Space Launch Complex 40 with it. Since the Amos-6 accident, SpaceX has moved its operations to Kennedy Space Center's historic Launch Complex 39A, under the 20-year lease with NASA that SpaceX entered into in April of 2014.
With limited information made available to the public, conspiracy theories, including those involving it being struck by a drone and snipers hired by SpaceX's competition, sprung up in articles and on comment boards on sites such as NASASpaceFlight.com and elsewhere regarding the cause of the Amos-6 explosion. This demonstrated the need for a transparent accounting of accidents involving public-private efforts such as NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract.
Extra: Meanwhile, NASA has growing confidence in the test flight schedule for Boeing and SpaceX's crewed flights: http://spacenews.com/nasa-and-companies-express-growing-confidence-in-commercial-crew-schedules/
Related: NASA Advisory Committee Skeptical of SpaceX Manned Refueling Plan
SpaceX Identifies Cause of September Explosion
After Months of Delay Following Explosion, SpaceX Finally Launches More Satellites
Problems With SpaceX Falcon 9 Design Could Delay Manned Missions
Elon Musk Accuses Tesla Employee of Being a Union Agitator
SpaceX Technician says Concerns about Test Results Got Him Fired
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:48AM (1 child)
What accidents?
-NASA
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:49AM
Nobody knew rocket science was so complicated!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:29AM (5 children)
The cause of the SpaceX failure was quickly discovered. It was a defective strut which performed well under specifications. This was remedied for future missions. The cause of the Orbital Sciences failure was never able to be determined. Failure isn't a problem. However, failure without being able to learn from it is a major problem. SpaceX isn't going to suffer from another failing strut, yet whatever issue caused the failure of the Orbital Sciences is something that could very well occur again. This is why launch companies take months out of operational schedules (at great loss) to discover the exact cause of any sort of rocket 'anomaly.' The failure to track down that anomaly by Orbital Sciences is an issue of major concern.
The article also tries to imply that these sort of explosions would pose risk to human spaceflight. They would not. This is the entire point of launch abort systems. No matter how careful and cautious a company is, mistakes will happen. We've been flying planes for more than 100 years and have done millions of flights. Yet we still get failures there, and that's a technology that's a million times less complex (and explosive) than rocketry. And consequently for the indefinite future preparing for the possibility of failure will remain an integral part of human rated spaceflight. None of these incidents would have posed a threat to human passengers thanks to launch escape systems.
(Score: 1) by Virindi on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:41AM (1 child)
Launch abort tends to not be the safest procedure. While surviving the explosion of the launch rocket may be possible, it is completely unreasonable to describe that event as posing no additional risk to the crew.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:08AM
Oh I completely agree there. I am of course just talking about fatalities. Only one launch escape has ever been executed. It was in the early 80s on a Soyuz capsule and the crew experienced upwards of 15gs of acceleration. That's one hell of a roller coaster ride, but it's a lot better than getting incinerated and disintegrated. It's really absurd and inexplicable that the Space Shuttle was not designed with such mechanisms. One can only imagine how much further our space program could have advanced if we didn't have the shift to extreme risk aversion caused by those completely needless deaths.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:12AM (1 child)
This article is shit. A simple google through reddits /r/space comments regarding it would easily explain that the second "sitting on the ground" explosion was solved as well. And as for "people"? That's why they don't put people on ANY launch ANYWHERE until the last minute. Because even pre-mixing tanks can lead to explosions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:30AM
If Musky says it's solved, it's solved! Send them to the moon, now!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:23PM
Turns out rocket science is hard, news at 11.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:38PM
Seems like they may be lacking technically and perhaps contractually.
X may hold a lot of cards here. Both the raw data from the vehicles and i would bet NDA's.
OTOH, it's in X's interest to understand and fix the problem.
It does seem like eventually either NASA or NTSB will be able to analyse and publish private space mishaps.
Eventually may be after the technology is well known and publishing is not a proprietary nightmare.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @04:44PM (2 children)
if i'm not paying for it and the people volunteer they can shoot them at the moon like a sick dart game for all i care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:01PM (1 child)
if you're an American taxpayer, you are paying for it. SpaceX is funded mostly by NASA contracts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:26PM
SpaceX had 9 launches in 2016. 3 were for NASA. They've had 10 launches so far this year, 2 were for NASA. The US taxpayer pays Boeing/Lockheed a billion dollars a year as part of a 'launch capability contract.' They get that money for literally doing nothing. It's supposed to be a sort of hedging to ensure launch capability for military use. In reality, it's just corruption. SpaceX gets no such thing. They only get paid for providing launch services. On top of all of this the US taxpayer pays about $400 million per Boeing/Lockheed launch. We pay about $100 million per SpaceX launch.