
Congressional Investigators Warn of SpaceX Rocket Defects - fmihaila
https://www.wsj.com/articles/congressional-investigators-warn-of-spacex-rocket-defects-1486067874
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Robotbeat
Realize the article is written by Andy Pasztor. If there is ever a negative
SpaceX angle, he'll find it.

I'm not disputing the factual content of the article, nor do I have reason to
believe he's paid off to do hit pieces, but it's important to realize he
almost constantly has a chip on his shoulder with respect to SpaceX.

Another thing to keep in mind: SpaceX produces more liquid rocket engines than
any other domestic provider by a VERY large margin.

~~~
mevile
It's good to have someone who's skeptical and willing to travel beyond the
spacex fever the tech press is infected with to report on things with a
critical eye. This seems like a totally valid article, and as long as the
facts are correct as reported it doesn't really matter who the author is.

~~~
djmdjm
Agreed - the criticisms here are pure ad hominem. If there is a problem with
SpaceX components, then that is surely more important and relevant than who
wrote the article publicising it.

~~~
linkregister
Except that the journalistic track record of an author is additional
information.

Imagine a person who you know to have a large bias against something. Now
imagine they tell you a narrative about that thing. You, being a reasonable
person, would use greater scrutiny about that narrative than someone who you
know to be uninterested or even marginally interested in the subject.

I agree that the public has an interest in finding out about issues in the
rockets its government purchases. The above commenter isn't saying "disregard,
it's the anti-SpaceX guy!" It's just more information. Gathering information
has a cost; and we can't all fully research every opinion.

I didn't downvote you; it's a reasonable argument to make, and I don't mind
giving the counter-opinion in the least.

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conistonwater
Generally speaking, not wrt this article, I want to point out that usually the
definition of bias is that it's unreasonable—if the concerns are reasonable,
then it's not bias. So you can't look at someone, see that they write negative
articles, and conclude bias. That's not enough information: you still ought to
establish whether they got it wrong (especially in an obvious or lazy way),
and only then conclude they are biased. If someone keeps writing
negative/positive articles, and you don't know if they're right, then you also
don't know if they're biased or not.

Since I don't see anybody pointing out what's obviously wrong with these
concerns, I feel safe to assume it's not biased. Figuring out if an argument
is biased is at least as hard as examining the argument on merits, and usually
much harder. So I think that the commenters were right to call out the ad
hominem.

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alistproducer2
Absolutely. The only time a person's bias matters is with an opinion piece. If
supported facts are laid out, who cares about the author's opinions?

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Dylan16807
You can write an article claiming almost anything if you include supporting
facts and deliberately ignore dissenting facts. The world is full of noisy
data.

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conistonwater
You can dismiss any evidence you want by pointing out unspecified dissenting
facts that might exist, so you gotta be quite specific. That's why assessing
things on merit is right, but pointing out that all data is noisy is not the
way to go: it's uninformative.

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Dylan16807
Pointing out that data is noisy as a counterargument to an article is
uninformative. Pointing out that data is noisy to encourage critical thinking
and make people wary of manipulation is not uninformative.

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josho
This strikes me as an example of everything in the system working.

-GAO analyzes SpaceX processes and discovers a shortcoming -Media reports on this to create public awareness -SpaceX is compelled to respond and fix the problem (something their engineers were probably already aware of anyway) -Space Travel continues to move safely forward

This is quite refreshing from other government initiatives at the moment.

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rtkwe
Really step 2 isn't necessary at all beyond transparency and a voracious
curiosity about SpaceX from some circles. NASA would simply not qualify
SpaceXs' rockets for manned flight without these fixes.

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throwanem
> step 2 isn't necessary at all

Isn't it? One wonders what would've followed from a decision on the part of
Thiokol's engineers to take to the media their concerns about SRB segment seal
reliability. Absent such external pressure, I see no _a priori_ reason to
assume NASA management won't make the same errors it did in 1986 and 2003.

~~~
rtkwe
With each of those NASA has changed and put more safeguards in place in their
process. And (as I recall because the article is refusing to open for me now
even through google in incognito) NASA was already requiring changes before
the GAO report was coming out. So it seems like this was already behind
handled properly by being redesigned before human certification.

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jobu
SpaceX addressed the issue with the turbine cracks today in an email Reuters:

 _SpaceX said it has "qualified our engines to be robust to turbine wheel
cracks. However, we are modifying the design to avoid them altogether,” said
spokesman John Taylor._ [http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-space-spacex-
idUKKBN15H307](http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-space-spacex-idUKKBN15H307)

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PinguTS
I think that totally underwrites the behavior of Elon Musk how I see it. Even
if engineers know better that there are problems with certain design decisions
and things have to be redone, Elon overwrites and say: "just do it, we will
fix it later." That basically to be able to run its marketing machine that he
is the innovative guy.

It is this IT thinking principle of MVP with knowing design flaws. "But we
will fix the flaws later." which is different from the engineering principle.
In the engineering principle if design flaws become obvious, yes things gets
delayed, because it has to be redone to eleminate the design flaws from the
beginning. Because we know, things you can fix early may delay, but it is
cheap. Things you need to fix later are expansive. Like if your production is
set up and running and then you need to change things, you need also to change
production.

He has shown this behavior with the Autopilot in the Tesla. Now it also
becomes obvious for SpaceX: "Industry officials have known about problems with
cracked blades on Falcon 9 versions for many months or even years. But cracks
continued to be found during tests as recently as September 2016, Robert
Lightfoot, NASA’s acting administrator, confirmed in an interview with The
Wall Street Journal earlier this week."

~~~
_ph_
Well, considering that they fly 10 of those engines with every Falcon9 launch,
and so far only a single of them has actually failed (and just shut off), it
does not seem to be an actual problem so far. It might be interesting to see
if this changes as the engines are reflown with the recovered first stages. If
this might create an actual safety hazard for manned missions, it all makes
sense to postpone a final solution till you are getting close to doing the
manned flights. No reason to delay cargo missions for something that might
affect manned rating.

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skolos
>The Government Accountability Office’s preliminary findings reveal a pattern
of problems with turbine blades that pump fuel into rocket engines

>The crack-prone parts are considered a potentially major threat to rocket
safety, the industry officials said, and may require redesign of what are
commonly called the Falcon 9’s turbopumps.

>A SpaceX spokesman said “we have qualified our engines to be robust” to such
cracks but are “modifying the design to avoid them altogether.” The pending
changes “will be part of the final design” for the Falcon 9, he added, “in
partnership with NASA to qualify engines for manned spaceflight.”

~~~
skolos
Another interesting bit:

>For Boeing, these officials said, GAO investigators—among other items—raised
questions about the status of tests to determine the reliability of its
parachute systems designed to help returning manned capsules land safely.

>The GAO also has determined that both companies face an uphill struggle to
meet NASA’s statistical goal of no more than one projected astronaut fatality
in 270 flights, industry officials said.

~~~
merpnderp
Wasn't NASA's record with the space shuttle more like 1 in 2.5 fatalities per
flight? 14 fatalities in 135 launches?

Must have been good enough for government work.

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LeifCarrotson
> 1 in 2.5 fatalities per flight?

No. How did you reach this number?

> 14 fatalities in 135 launches?

Yes. Though I think it makes more sense to read this as 2 losses in 135
flights (98.5% safety rating), or 14 fatalities among 817 passengers (98.2%
safety rating).

(The per-passenger safety rating is slightly less because the only losses
carried 7-passenger crews, while about half the flights carried 5 or 6
passenger crews. I didn't include the non-orbital test flights carrying crews
of 2, which were arguably more dangerous than orbital flights, and I tried to
handle Mir transfers and ISS crew exchanges sensibly.)

Historically, failures in spaceflight result in a loss of all crew (or a loss
of no crew, if they have abort capabilities). This suggests an easy way to
artificially improve the launches-per-fatality metric would be to reduce the
number of crew per flight, so I'd prefer to use numbers for failures-per-
launch or fatalities-per-passenger.

~~~
merpnderp
That's not the bar NASA is setting for SpaceX. They are stating fatalities per
launch.

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gozur88
How did they discover the turbine cracks? It seems a bit unfair if this is a
result of examination of returned engines, since other companies leave
evidence of similar problems at the bottom of the ocean.

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JshWright
Any rocket engine design used on modern launch vehicles has undergone
extensive ground testing, including multiple full mission duration burns on
test stands.

~~~
gozur88
That's true, but it doesn't really address the question. If the cracks are a
result of flight stresses, test stand burns won't reveal them.

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aeturnum
If the tests don't simulate flight stresses, they are bad tests.

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scott113341
Is there a good way that you're aware of to simulate the acceleration
experienced by a rocket?

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JshWright
You're talking about a turbopump spinning at several tens of thousands of
rpms, at very high temperature. Yes, a couple g's of lateral acceleration adds
a bit too those stresses, but it's a fairly minor effect, I'm sure.

I think it's vastly more likely they're cracking from the rotation speed,
temperature, and pressure.

~~~
gozur88
I expect this is true, but I'd like to have a whole lot more information than
the article contains. Specifically, under what conditions the cracks are
observed.

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JshWright
The cracks were observed during ground testing, several years ago.

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Gravityloss
I think this is plausible if they've been increasing performance a lot in the
recent years. With a rocket engine, up to level, you can get that mostly by
just increasing pump speed.

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celticninja
Perhaps this is somewhere where Trumps less regulation stance will benefit
Musk.

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tptacek
In what way does SpaceX benefit from permission to launch unreliable rockets
into space?

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more_corn
Stop posting WSJ articles. Do you want a paywalled future? Because that's how
you get a paywalled future.

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wtf_is_up
I love my WSJ subscription. $50/year for students. Much better quality than
the clickbait journalism you get elsewhere for "free".

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bb611
I didn't realize there was a student tier, thanks for the note!

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Gravityloss
Their climate journalism has historically been negative information.

