NASA Advisory Committee Concerned About SpaceX Fueling Plans
Credit: USLaunchReport.com
SpaceX says it has ” a reliable fueling and launch process”
The Wall Street Journal reports that NASA’s International Space Station Advisory Committee has deep concerns about SpaceX’s plans to load astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon prior to fueling the Falcon 9 booster.
On Monday, the committee met and issued further strong warnings about the potential safety hazards of the way entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. plans to fuel rockets before they are slated to transport U.S. crews into orbit….
The concerns were expressed in a December 2015 letter to NASA headquarters by former astronaut and retired Air Force Lt. General Thomas Stafford, the panel’s chairman. Gen. Stafford wrote that such practices—which envision pumping in fuel with astronauts already strapped into a capsule on top of the rocket—go against decades of international space-launch policy. The committee was unanimous last year in opposing SpaceX’s fueling plans….
A NASA official assigned to Monday’s meeting said the committee could expect a briefing in December.
After the meeting, a SpaceX spokesman said the company “has designed a reliable fueling and launch process that minimizes the duration and number of personnel exposed to the hazards of launching a rocket.”
113 responses to “NASA Advisory Committee Concerned About SpaceX Fueling Plans”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
There is a narrow window of time when dealing with supercooled propellants. There’s also the lives of the pad crew to consider. Their lives are important, too. Loading the astronauts ahead of time allows them to clear the launch pad and activate the abort system before fueling begins. This should be much safer than a rushed boarding of an already fueled booster.
Agreed. Preloading the fuel and activating the escape system, ensures the safety of ground crew AND astronauts. It may or may not decrease the safety of the rocket hardware. Though, an exploded rocket is but a costly inconvenience, it is not dead people.
Besides, the investigation is pointing to the temperature and pressure of loading helium, not the propellents themselves. This investigation and a review of procedures could make this debate a non-issue.
While a rocket being fueled is almost certainly more dangerous than a fueled rocket, if there is a tank breach with SpaceX’s approach, the astronauts are strapped in and will probably escape unscathed. No single point of failure leading to loss of life. Loading the astronauts afterwards would remove the fueling risk to the them, but now the astronauts and ground crew all die in a (less likely) tank breach. Seems like a no brainer that SpaceX’s approach is better if they can show that failures during Falcon 9 fueling are not repeated.
Fueling is considered so hazardous that no one from the ground crew is allowed near the rocket. We saw that in September; nobody was killed or injured when the rocket caught fire and exploded. But, you’re saying the astronauts should take those risks and be there when the fuel is loaded.
The launch abort system is not designed to guard against risks that can be mitigated in other ways. It’s really an option of last resort when everything has gone wrong and there’s no other option available.
Your rocket deciding it wants to RUD right now would qualify as “last resort” I think… 😉
I tell you what, if you gave me the choice of being strapped in with a flight proven LAS and then filling the rocket versus walking up to a fueled one with no hope of survival in a failure until the door is closed, I’ll take the former… unless it is clear that the odds of death in an LAS abort are higher than the odds of a fully fueled rocket exploding. All of this comes down to probabilities and NASA I’m sure has crunched the numbers and seems to be on board.
Can somebody explain why boarding crew on a fully fuelled rocket is considered safer than first boarding and then fuelling?
The loading operation is hazardous. Loading first lets the fuel and the rocket settled down before the crew is placed on board.
Assuming properly working LAS wouldn’t mentioned hazard be mitigated?
I think you’re misunderstanding the purpose of a launch abort system. It’s like an ejection seat on a fighter, or oxygen masks and escape slides on airliners. They’re there as an absolutely last resort, something you only use because all other options have failed and you’re going to die otherwise.
The goal is to mitigate risks so that you never have to use these systems. The LAS is not there to be used against risks that can be mitigated in other ways.
Ok, I did not realize that LAS is not for risk mitigation. Thanks.
Not what I said. It’s not there to deal with risks that can be otherwise mitigated by different means.
The automobile industry and 30,000 – 50,000 people dying a year for a century seems to go against what you are saying.
Government defines risk different then commerce. Also commercial customers have always been willing to assume for risk than congressional members wanting development dollars spent in their districts to mitigate ALL risks no matter what the cost to the taxpayer.
It seems silly to add risks to a launch system that contradicts long established safety practices on the premise that the launch abort system — which has risks of its own — can handle the danger.
I am not talking about adding, I am talking about what we are truly engaging in now. Humanity is now planning on commercially opening up the hardest frontier there is. We also have to understand that people are now going to die a lot more often. Like it or not. Business and commercial customers just historically assign risk differently then government and congress with it’s corporate interests in their districts. It will be a paradigm shift in thinking.
We can lose a jet liner and hundreds of passengers and we still fly. How about an explosive decompression of a space station with 200 people?
There are some really hard lessons coming because business is different than government.
“We also have to understand that people are now going to die a lot more often.”
Here’s were we need to be careful, we need to let the public know this is dangerous and people are going to die, but if people die early on it could be the death of manned commercial spaceflight and space faring civilization in general
Safety standards like shuttle, no escape system, tiny tiles that break and crack with each flight, solid boosters that you can’t turn off that spin wildly around in a failure!
Put me in a Dragon two and fuel that baby up!
More Mickey Mouse chicken Sh#$ from the old guard.
P.S. Safest system is SLS Orion, a jobs program that never flies. When is their first crewed flight planned again? 202?
Space shuttle is to go for any argument about safety. As long as a system can be compared with that, the subtleties and complexities of any argument can be ignored. It’s not just for shuttle that they loaded the crew after fueling. You certainly know that.
It is the ad-hitlerum argument of the space industry.
Low bars are easy to hop over.
Given the (current) failure rate of F9, there is a high chance you would have been dead if you had been strapped on the top of it. At this stage, the Shuttle was more reliable, despite it being a flying turd.
Neither F9 losses would have resulted in LOC. However both STS losses resulted in LOC.
That is speculation (possibly correct, but certainly not fact).
Not speculation, barring the ol’ Act of God. Both F9 anomalies occurred within the performance envelope of the Dragon V2’s LAS. STS had no LAS. The shuttle was reliable (as in didn’t blow up all the time) due to sheer luck, the hard work of tens of thousands of people, and a mind boggling amount of money.
You are assuming that the LAS will work flawlessly every time. That is a bad assumption for something tested exactly once.
Well you do kinda have to assume that your spacecraft’s propulsion system is gonna work. Otherwise, you ought to stay home and take up knitting instead.
Hmmmmm, should we assume the booster will kinda work too?…Whooooops…
Otherwise, you ought to stay home and take up knitting instead.
Yes. And if all that stuff works, guess what? You get to go to space and profit!
“IF”…Please remind us which side of “IF” the last SX booster was on…
I was curious if you are always a douche, so I looked at your other Disqus posts, and yep. Bye bye.
Ahhhhh name calling, how adult….you must have run out of silly opinions…
And the “all that stuff did not work” is the side of “IF” the last booster was on..
How many launches does ULA have, for this year after their Halloween launch?
Planning to be in Florida to watch the first relaunch of a booster in early 2017. I think it will be the same booster I watched come in on the Barge.
I will likely go to Florida to watch the launch of the first F9 Block 5 launch as well. That is the one with, more thrust plus improved legs plus other improvements. The “final” reusable version of F9.
Hope to settle my debt then.
I think they are working on launch #10…VAFB is up next for them, I believe…
Let me know when you get here, we will meet up for sure…
You are absolutely nuts. I really hope you don’t work in an industry where risks actually need to be properly thought through and mitigated in order to not kill people.
Hyperbole much?
The current failure rate of the F9 is 93%, Ariane 5 is 95%, current Soyuz variant is 100%, Proton is 87%, Atlas and Delta is 100%, CZ-2F is 100%, Shuttle was 98% (and still killed 14 people),
So your chance of dying on a F9 is only marginally higher than other VASTLY more mature launch systems. And if failure rate is your measure then can you tell me why does a system with 98% success rate over 135 flights and $209B program cost killed more astronauts than all other manned launch systems in history combined?
If you would like to provide a source for the increase probability of death on board an F9 please feel free to post it
[edit] Just for fun if you look at the success rate for NASA’s first three manned launch vehicles the combined success rate was 24 for 27 (89%) while carrying astronauts, the F9 is 27 for 29 before carrying crew (93%)
You are comparing success rates for systems with many launches to one with few launches. And you are justifying by comparing to STS, which was a known terrible system. Ariane 5 is not man-rated (and is not intended to be man-rated) and is therefore irrelevant. You are also comparing a constantly evolving vehicle to more static vehicles. F9 is in constant flux and has blown up twice in the last two years.
“F9 is in constant flux and has blown up twice in the last two years.”
By that logic John Glenn and Alan Shepard should have never flown into space after a Redstone and two atlas failures
“You are comparing success rates for systems with many launches to one with few launches”
Ok let’s compare the first 29 launches of each rocket and see how they stack up so we aren’t influenced by nature systems
Ariane 5 – 27/29 (93%, and is currently on a 75 successful flights in a row, I don’t care whether it’s man rated or not that’s better than NASA’s manned launch systems)
Atlas 5/Delta 4 – 29/29 each
STS – 28/29 (96.5%) with ~$100B development cost adjusted for inflation and flying 4 highly different variants of the orbiter
Saturn I and Ib – 19/19 carrying crew
Titan II GLV – 12/12 carrying crew with an iffy LAS ejection seat no aborts and no fatalities
Atlas LV-3B – 7/9 (77.8%) carrying crew after 2 failures with no fatalities or aborts required
Mercury Redstone – 5/6 (83.3%) carrying crew after one failure with no aborts and no fatalities
None of this includes the unmanned versions of each rocket that were undergoing constant changes and experiencing failures alongside their man rated counterparts. And not included are the Russian success and failures which were even more dangerous than their us counterparts. At least the mercury astronauts could land safely in their capsules the cosmonauts had to bail out of the Vostok and parachute to a landing outside of their capsule. The Atlas and saturns were also under constant change because they were still learning how to make rockets work instead of blow up each orbiter was basically a unique design and payload arrangement and the Apollo missions were constantly being redesigned to optimize payload to the moon
So again how is the Falcon 9 more likely to result in death than the equivalent counterparts with equivalent records and less flight experience than the current falcons?
The total number of deaths on the highways has come down in real terms even as the number of drivers and the millions of miles driven have increased. That’s been a significant achievement due to sustained efforts to mitigate risks.
The concerns about this fueling method are based on decades of safety practices and experience in launching people to space. It’s not a cost issue.
Yes it has but a whole small city is still wiped out every year from that form of transportation, with loss of productivity in the billions and it is deemed acceptable to the point it is a non topic.
Yes it is a cost issue. Every innovation is driven by cost and profit and loss in commercial system design, versus government and congress where untold billions will go in safe at all costs as long as the development money is spent in my district.
Oh come now Douglas, just look at the seat belt issue with commercial transportation..
Outside of the US, pretty much everyone (in western countries) uses seatbelts. Same with motorcylce helmets. The US is a bit of a “we want to be free m’kay” basket case in this regard (hence why the US needs more powerful airbags than everyone else).
This is not true. Plenty of pissoff hooligans in Europe and elsewhere.
OK. it *IS* true in any country other than the US that I have lived in. Australia, NZ, UK, Germany. I don’t know ANYONE who doesn’t routinely wear a seatbelt (other than farmers on their own land when hopping in and out). Plus, the difference in airbag construction in the US, is entirely because of the culture of non-compliance with seatbelt legislation. It isn’t random.
Neither do I and I live in Redneck, Georgia.
Edit: seatbelts vs. airbags. Wrong. What is random is US DOT specs for airbags, which because they were first developed and deployed here (in the 60s) had problems with the early materials and initiation system, which led to mandatory over-engineering. It has nothing to do with seatbelt use. Most other countries don’t have such strict specifications and simply ride along on what the US does (as in most things….).
Is that law about not wearing seatbelts in trucks still in effect?
I donno, I don’t have a truck.
I thought it was because Americans are fatter than other nations! Lol
And also motor cycle helmets… commercial customers are just willing to accept more risk, hell they fight their own government when it says you have to put on your seat belt or helmet.
Not in FL, no helmets required
I hate to inform you of this but people die all the time from all sorts of things. They die slipping in the bathtube, they die in cars, sometimes they just keel over and die for no apparent reason.
Death is part of life. When someone dies or is in an accident, people naturally wring their hands and moans, “If only there was a _whatever_”. And in comes a politician with a solution that will only cost X of tax dollars and Y burden of regulation or restriction on personal freedom and responsibility. And yet people still die. Strange.
I couldn’t agree more. We are smart little monkeys but we still kill ourselves getting out of a bathtub.
The support crew that helps the astronauts get on board a fully fueled rocket have no safe escape.
True. But experience shows it’s less risky to load the crew after fueling.
What experience? There’s been too few explosions in the history of spaceflight that are similar to Sept to draw any broader conclusions.
And with F9 itself, the only point in the launch sequence where it is definitively stable and safe for ground/support crew to approach it is before fuelling.
Fueling is a very difficult time for any rocket, especially cryogenic propellants. As we were reminded two months ago fueling can go wrong quickly if procedures deviate from the nominal timeline. So the loading process can be considered much more dangerous than a static, fueled rocket that isn’t changing very much.
Engineers are traditionally cautious when their control volume begins rapidly changing state, they like things to move slowly and predictable, something that SpaceX fueling processes are not
So the probability of loss of crew is higher when loading propellant while the crew is already boarded with LAS ready, compared to when boarding fully fueled rocket with no way to escape/be protected from RUD?
Honestly I think it’s lipstick on a pig. You’re putting humans ontop of a stick of high explosives and lighting the fuse.
Really the best way to ensure crew safety afte a failure has begun is a top notch LAS. Whether you have to use that is dependent on your design, safety margins, experience with the system, procedures and most importantly your culture (how dedicated are you to protecting those astronauts)
At this point, I’d actually feel safer sitting atop a hypergolic upper stage at room temperature.
I can’t help but imagine hearing all kinds of pings and pops as LOX is added and things get cold-soaked.
While you may feel safer I’m sure that’s of little value to the ground crews that have to handle and load that nasty stuff. Even loading the hyper mass of dragon spacecraft would be fatal to the entire ground crew if they were exposed. Cryos only really have skin contact hazards hypers are toxic to the skin eyes lungs liver and every other major organ so let’s leave the hypers to the smallest scales possible
You don’t want any of it to leak of course.
This post made me wonder about fueling approaches:
http://forum.nasaspacefligh…
Which would you side with?
Lipstick on a pig, people are arguing about the safest way to seatbelt humans to a stick of high explosives
The only thing that matters is whether you can generate adequate safety procedures for your loading sequences. You’re either exposing the astronauts to the dangerous transients of prop loading or exposing astronauts and ground crews to a fully fueled bomb.
At least the dragon can have an armed LAS. The Shuttle and Saturn launch towers had escape trollers on zip lines, in case the rocket started to explode or the ground thought it was about to explode the astronauts and ground crews were supposed to get off the rocket climb into the trolley and glide down to a bunker below. Really?
I have reservations about their fueling plans too, but at the same time some of this does seem to be people afraid of doing something different than the way it’s always been done. I still would like to see SpaceX consider adding insulation to the tanks for crew launches so they can fuel the rocket prior to crew boarding.
At what point does putting humans on board (and next too) a fully fuels rocket go from being “safe” to being dangerous?
When you haven’t done it for close to a decade?
I have said it before: NASA will never put astronauts on Falcon 9.
With its current reliability record, its a tough sell. However, they are putting a 9 billion payload on top of Ariane V
“Never” is a very long time…
Yes, it is a very long time 🙂 However, CCiCap/CCtCap does not run forever. If NASA doesn’t have faith in Falcon 9 by 2018 it’s unlikely they will award any crew flights.
I guess we’ll see if the faith they have shown so far diminishes.
I must admit, it seems hard to imagine them doing so at this stage, unless there is a VERY long track record of successful launches (hundreds). I’m not sure about ‘never’, though.
“unless there is a VERY long track record of successful launches (hundreds)”
Just like NASA did before they put humans in harms way right? 24 for 27 on their first three manned rockets, only two flights of the Saturn V before carrying the first astronauts (one of which was a partial failure), two flights of the Lunar Module before sending crews to the surface of the moon, ZERO flights before carrying crew on the Shuttle with no abort system. Pretty much the same record for the Soviets too, has anyone followed your advice of hundreds of successful flights in a row before flying crew at any point in history? No
CCiCap/CCtCap does not run forever.
They certainly did it many times on Shuttle.
Does launching Dragon 2 to the ISS requires all of the performance of F9? If not, would it be possible to use regular LOX and not superchilled like they used to with previous versions of F9? Wouldn’t it be all around safer and allow wider time margins for boarding after the fuelling?
I think they would need a separate production line for F9’s just for crew to do what you are talking about. That’s costly.
May not be if your reusing rockets
What mods would be required just to leave the LOX a little less dense and a little warmer?
If NASA insists, they may just have to eat the cost of a separate production line.
We’ll have to see if NASA insists.
I think the super-chilled propellents allows for a different turbopump design that also increases the longevity of the pumps, thus aiding reusability – basically, as Douglas says, the super-chilled rocket is a different design.
Good point. I hope they will sort it out.
They never killed anyone. They have never tried to launch anyone. That also goes for the Indians, the Europeans and the Kerbal Space Program. So, I don’t know what the point of that comparison is.
He eats a doughnut every time someone who claims to be a space enthusiast puts him down.
Why can someone not be a space enthusiast and not also be lovestruck with SpaceX? Your binary thinking isn’t very mature.
True. But it was funny.
Well this was hardly unexpected. SpaceX have time to work through their current issues and it’s still a new rocket ironing out a few bugs. Nothing to get terribly upset about. Anyways, this resistance will continue until the day they start launching austronauts and others. My bet, they won’t change their minds on this and they won’t put in another fuelling process at additional cost. They’ll sort the issues.
Cheers
“this resistance will continue until the day they start launching austronauts and others.”
And even after, resistance to SpaceX is somewhat of a sport. Austronauts? Australian astronauts, I’m guessing
Huh! Believe it or not that was unintentional but, if they offer a ride, I wouldn’t turn it down.
Cheers
That’s a bit disingenous. I think you need to take the number of total launches into account. At this stage, F9 is much less reliable than the STS. And the STS was a turd.
In the first 29 flights of the Space Shuttle they had one failure that killed 7 people, compared to 2 failures from the F9, apples to apples
The Shuttle had no method to rescue the crew, Dragon will (theoretically) be able to rescue the crew from any failure
http://finance.yahoo.com/ne…
More from Reuters on this story:
“This is a hazardous operation,” Space Station Advisory Committee Chairman Thomas Stafford, a former NASA astronaut and retired Air Force general, said during a conference call on Monday….
Members of the eight-member group, which includes veterans of NASA’s Gemini,
Apollo and space shuttle programs noted that all previous rockets that have flown people into space were fueled before astronauts got to the launch pad.
“It was unanimous … Everybody there, and particularly the people who had experience over the years, said nobody is ever near the pad when they fuel a booster,” Stafford said, referring to an earlier briefing the group had about SpaceX’s proposed fueling procedure….
In an email to Reuters sent late Monday, SpaceX said its fueling system and launch processes will be re-evaluated pending the results of the accident investigation….
“As needed, any additional controls will be put in place to ensure crew safety, from the moment the astronauts reach the pad, through fueling, launch, and spaceflight, and until they are brought safely home,” SpaceX said.
Didn’t most of the same old guard say that SpaceX would never land a first stage on land or sea because no one had done it before?
Do those planes have a SuperDraco powered escape system?.
Read all the comments. I still think a SRB is best for crew. None of the worries said does the SRB have. I am the only one that thinks this that I have read. CC lets the companies decide. SpaceX build some segments, ship to Utah to be loaded. Rent NASA train cars and send to KSC. This would also give you a back up for commercial payloads if F-9 blows up again. I only remember only one comment from an astronaut on using a SRB for Crew. She said she was sorry to not get a ride on Ares-1, that would have been a heck of a ride. So one other person does think it would be a good idea. I wonder if the Crews have any say or do they want to fly so bad, that whatever SpaceX wants is fine. I would never be in a launch, but I would prefer a SRB. Well I am in a launch watching and it hurts when someone is killed or a rocket is lost.
“I wonder if the Crews have any say or do they want to fly so bad, that whatever SpaceX wants is fine.”
Or do they want to fly so bad they won’t criticize the dangers of flying on two massive SRB’s 135 times despite the painful demonstration, no ability to escape in the event of a failure or ability to shut down your rocket as it’s failing, and yet they signed up. It’s because those people have “The Right Stuff,” if you’re not familiar with it you should read up on the mentality these people have.
The military does hot refueling very often. In the case of the Falcon 9, having the crew on board with the LES activated and the pad cleared of personnel is almost certainly safer than trying to load the crew in a narrow time window on top of a fully fueled rocket. Pad Rats lives matter, too.
No one ever said rocket surgery was easy.
Sea level is hard.
Sea level is easy. Gathering all those demons, stuffing them into a tin can and getting them to do your bidding without causing mischief is the hard part.
bhahahahahah
Seems like getting a Dragon 2 to the ISS isn’t very demanding in terms of Δv. Couldn’t they just load the LOX at something closer to the boiling point and use the old v1.1 loading protocol?
They would have to also revert to older Merlin motor marks and software because the current “Full Thrust” are tuned for densified propellants. Besides that they don’t want to have to more lines in the engine shop, the recertification of old motors on the new airframe, esp. for manrating will be a major PITA.
Nope, they just need to get this problem solved and keep going.
I get that the software’s different, but are the actual mechanical parts different, too?
The problem with the “get this problem solved” approach is that it’s ultimately a political problem, with a lot of engineering FUD undergirding it. First they’re going to have to convince NASA (and probably the FAA, as well) that the escape system is robust enough to cover all the conceivable fuel loading failure modes. Since a fair number of those modes are completely outside the vehicle (e.g. a line letting go in the strongback), you then have to prove that all of the instrumentation from the upstream systems can be fed reliably to the Dragon for abort, that there are no external shrapnel issues, etc. That’s a mighty big failure tree.
And even then, they’re going to be prodding the exact ganglion that triggers every government bureaucrat’s CYA reflex. There’s almost no upside for the certifiers to take the risk in the face of potential career suicide, because the optics just look terrible in any form of hindsight. (“They let them do whhaaaat?“) If I were a NASA bureaucrat (and if I am, I’ve probably been drinking buddies with the guy from Boeing for the last 20 years…), I’d just note that there were three CCtCap vendors for a reason–so sorry, Elon–and have done with it.
SX has its share of NASA drinking buddies too. The F9-FT has a technical problem in its 2nd stage that needs to be fixed. That is all. SX has lots of really good engineers.
Dragon’s LAS is good. As good as you are going to get for a system to save your bacon when things go sideways. And it is the “right” solution if you want efficient, reusable spacecraft.
The F9’s fueling procedures aren’t wrong or bad, they are just like almost all of their solutions, different, which yes, to bureaucrats and armchair spacemen is both of the former. But again, it is the “right” solution if we are to maximize performance and push what is possible.
Have no fear. Otherwise…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
We just failed a fueling test. But, have no fear. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, again? Not like we blew up the second stage and lost a payload twice or something….
Oh, wait….we did….
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Rockets an’t eazy. If your level of satisfaction is 100% safety and perfection, then you want at best the status quo that never changes (Delta, Titan, Soyuz forevah!!!) or worse, you want to pull the plug and everyone should go “build” smart fone apps or the like.
So….SpaceX blows up two rockets due to problems with the second stage that will sit closest to Crew Dragon, and proposes a fueling method not used on previous human spaceflights over the past 50 years, which NASA’s expert advisory committee thinks is unsafe and unwise, and you call everyone who questions this approach wimps?
Tom Stafford — who sat on two Titan and two Saturn rockets and orbited the moon — is a wimp? Seriously? You think he’s unwilling to accept risks? That he wants 100 percent safety?
What is this, the fifth grade? How old are you?
There is no such thing as 100% safety. In anything but especially in aerospace. If you think there is, you are following the wrong industry.
I think Tom Stafford is an old man, and old men (and bureaucracies) get set in their ways of doing things. How many decades has it been since we’ve been to the Moon? How many more will it be if we keep doing things the same way or insist on the mystical “100% safety”?
SpaceX has problems with its Falcon 2nd stage. Its just a technical problem to be fixed. There will be plenty of F-9R FT V.XYZs launched between now and when a Crewed Dragon is raised on the Cape.
Sheesh, you’re turning me into a fanboy…
>There is no such thing as 100% safety.
No such thing as 100% safety, eh? Well, it’s great that you’re here to tell us these things. Somehow I doubt that Stafford and the committee members — who lost friends and colleagues over the years — need to be reminded of that reality. I don’t need to be reminded of this. I watched Mike Alsbury die.;
>If you think there is, you are following the wrong industry.
It’s my way or the highway. This is like Roadhouse.
> think Tom Stafford is an old man, and old men (and bureaucracies) get set in their ways of doing things.
Well, yes, he’s definitely old. The vote on the committee was unanimous. And it’s based on solid experience over 50 years.
>How many more will it be if we keep doing things the same way or insist on the mystical “100% safety”?
Here we go again. Nobody’s insisting upon 100 percent safety.
“It’s my way or the highway. This is like Roadhouse.”
Actually its, “NASA’s way or the highway.” NASA’s Way sucks BTW.
“Here we go again. Nobody’s insisting upon 100 percent safety.”
Except that is pretty much what they are going to want.
“Wait! We don’t do it like that, so you can’t do it like that! Something bad might happen!”
Anyway, we aren’t even looking at this from the same perspective and its not our decision(s) to make, no sense arguing about it. But try to keep an objective eye without getting too much snark in it?
The way NASA’s done it for 50 plus years has not led to any losses of ground crews during fueling or crew entry into spacecraft. That goes for other human spaceflight programs. You got zero, nothing, nada, zilch to back up your exceedingly broad clam about NASA’s Way.
This approach is not zero risk. Nobody expects it to be zero risk. But it is seen as less risky than what SpaceX wants to do.
And neither do you that “OMG! They’re gonna die on a Dragon!”
Don’t forget that NASA had a pretty bloody learning curve. They blew up a lot of rockets and people on the ground did get killed. Much worse in comparison than SpaceX .
I’m not in the US, so it is your money, actually.