> I highly doubt that SpaceX would have imposed 63 corrective actions on itself without effective oversight.
Eh, I don't know if I agree with that. Most of the actions were very straightforward "stuff we need to fix to make the rocket do what we want it to do and not do what we don't want it to do".
Like, one of the actions was "make the launch pad not explode when the engines turn on". That was the root cause of the engine failures that led to the flight termination. Was SpaceX really not going to do that anyway?
Besides formalizing the process and writing down a list of 63 bullet points and using the legalese of "corrective actions" for them, I think the result would have been basically the same without the FAA looking over their shoulder.
But the main reason for my belief is that the Falcon 9 launch success streak is currently better than any other rocket in history (by a large margin), at 241 launches and counting (and 180 launches since the last landing failure). To put this in context, other launchers with a similar or greater number of launches go 30-50 launches between failures. Unless SpaceX is just incredibly unbelievably lucky, they seem to understand how to do RCA to build reliable rockets.
Rocket launches have to be close to the ideal candidate for COE-driven improvement. Any actual problems are going to be problems that need solving in the short term, and if they aren't solved, there will probably be short term pain. The costs of each launch are high enough that they have to take low-probability/high-severity risks seriously.
Other industries have incentives to defer problems into future years, to externalize the costs, or to just plain hide or ignore them based on things like "accepted industry practice" or "within prescribed safety limits". Somebody needs to balance out the short-term incentives by decision makers to get promoted on the back of a press release about a splashy success, because that success may have a metric ton of failure disguised inside.
Makes sense, they likely would have performed all of those mitigations. But would they have listed 63 in a public document? That resulted in some pretty bad headlines.
Eh, I don't know if I agree with that. Most of the actions were very straightforward "stuff we need to fix to make the rocket do what we want it to do and not do what we don't want it to do".
Like, one of the actions was "make the launch pad not explode when the engines turn on". That was the root cause of the engine failures that led to the flight termination. Was SpaceX really not going to do that anyway?
Besides formalizing the process and writing down a list of 63 bullet points and using the legalese of "corrective actions" for them, I think the result would have been basically the same without the FAA looking over their shoulder.
But the main reason for my belief is that the Falcon 9 launch success streak is currently better than any other rocket in history (by a large margin), at 241 launches and counting (and 180 launches since the last landing failure). To put this in context, other launchers with a similar or greater number of launches go 30-50 launches between failures. Unless SpaceX is just incredibly unbelievably lucky, they seem to understand how to do RCA to build reliable rockets.