The evidence shows clearly that Biden has worked to squelch Elon Musk and SpaceX
Starship prototype #15, during its successful suborbital test flight in May 2021
The public concerns expressed last week by one NASA official about the regulatory delays caused by the FAA to SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy development program illustrated once again my sense that there had been a stark change in how SpaceX was being regulated by the federal government, from the Trump to the Biden administration. Under Trump, SpaceX was moving fast, launching test flights frequently. Under Biden, all such test flights appeared to grind to a halt.
For example, it seemed to me that during the Trump administration the FAA allowed SpaceX to complete its investigations of explosions or launch failures quickly, so they could proceed as quickly to another test launch, sometimes only weeks later. After the first orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship on April 20, 2023, however, the FAA responded quite differently, demanding the right to oversee a full investigation that it also implied would take many months.
Others have disputed this assertion. For example, space reporter Doug Messier commented about my analysis, stating that the FAA’s insistence on a lengthy investigation into the April 20, 2023 Superheavy/Starship orbital test flight failure was simply standard procedure. “I don’t think this represents any change in policy. This is how it’s been done for years,” Messier wrote. “It’s easy to scapegoat FAA as THE cause of the problem, and speculate about nefarious actions by the Biden Administration.”
Who is right? Am I being paranoid? Or is Messier being naive? As Howard Cosell used to say on Monday Night Football, “Let’s go to the videotape!” Or in this case, let’s take a hard detailed look at how SpaceX’s test program for Starship/Superheavy came to a screeching halt when Joe Biden took over the White House from Donald Trump.
From 2018, when SpaceX began first cutting metal on Starship prototypes, to May 2021, the company did eight suborbital test flights and at least six tank and static fire engine tests, with some resulting in explosive destruction. Below is a list of those tests (There were more such engine and tank tests during that time, but these were ones I could quickly find).
- August 27, 2019: Starhopper: Success!
- February 29, 2020: Explosion during static fire test of SpaceX’s Starship-SN1 prototype
- March 9, 2020: SpaceX’s latest Starship tank test was uneventful and that’s great news for its flight debut
- April 3, 2020: Third Starship prototype collapses during tank pressure test
- May 29, 2020: Explosion during test of 4th Starship prototype
- June 24, 2020: SpaceX tests 7th Starship test prototype to failure
- August 4, 2020: Fifth Starship prototype flies!
- September 3, 2020: Another successful Starship prototype hop
- September 24, 2020: SpaceX destroys Starship prototype #7, as planned
- December 9, 2020: Starship #8 flies!
- February 2, 2021: SpaceX live feed of Starship #9 flight
- March 3, 2021: The Starship has landed!
- March 30, 2021: Starship prototype #11 crashes at landing
- April 29, 2021: FAA approves next three Starship test flights with prototype #15
- May 5, 2021: Starship #15 launches AND lands successfully
That May 5th Starship flight was the last Starship test flight. It was also the last test flight for the next two years. Since May 2021, following the full take-over of the Biden administration in late January 2021, SpaceX has done only one test launch, the April 20, 2023 first test flight of a stacked Superheavy/Starship. During that time there were a number of Superheavy and Starship static fire engine and tank tests, with one in July 2022 resulting in an explosion. In general however, the pace of test activity slowed to a crawl.
Note the pattern. From February 2020 until May 2021, SpaceX averaged almost one test flight per month. After May 2021 (and the arrival of Joe Biden) it is has only managed one test flight in two years. Yet that had not been Musk’s announced plan. The company had built a whole fleet of Superheavy and Starship prototypes, ready to launch. In June 2021 Musk said publicly he intended to do more test flights that year, using the company’s assembly line of available prototypes, allowing an orbital launch about once every two or three months.
None of that happened. After the March 30, 2021 crash of Starship prototype #11, the Biden administration moved in. Though Biden and his bureaucrats couldn’t prevent the FAA’s issuance of a blanket three-launch permit for the next prototype, #15 (#12-14 having been put aside), these Democrats quickly moved to squelch Musk’s planned Superheavy/Starship orbital test flights.
First the Biden administration elevated the importance of the FAA’s environment reassessment of Boca Chica, using it to block further flights for the next year as it imposed many new and complex restrictions on SpaceX’s operations there. After finally releasing that reassessment in June 2022 (after almost a half year of delays announced month-to-month), the FAA and the Biden administration then took almost another year to actually issue the launch license for the orbital Superheavy/Starship launch.
As the saying goes, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then it is a duck. By all impressions the Biden administration has appeared to act to squelch SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy program. The evidence as I have laid out here merely confirms this impression. Though NASA has contracted to use Starship to land its first Artemis astronauts on the Moon, the abuse of power, for power’s sake, seems to be the most important thing to Biden and the Democrats who now run the executive branch of the federal government. If the misuse of that power means that the Artemis lunar landing will be delayed, these Democrats don’t really care. What matters to them is to prove that they have the ability to tell others what they can and cannot do.
And since Elon Musk has made it clear he is no longer a loyal kneejerk Democrat, he is now the enemy to their power, and therefore must be squashed, like a bug. The evidence clearly shows that the Biden administration is making that squashing one of its primary goals.
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Just look at the litigation against Gibson Guitars under the Obama admin. Other companies were importing the same woods but donated to the dems.
“-Punish enemies and reward friends” is not just a campaign slogan it’s a Democrat lifestyle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeT67BvYzo4
No I don’t think you’re being paranoid. If the Superheavy had threatened something (like having to be destroyed by range safety for heading towards somewhere inhabited) there MIGHT have been a reason for a detailed investigation. But other than the damage from the pad within the compound that flight was nominal until stage separation. All it did was drop a Superheavy and a Starship in the Gulf of Mexico. The Superheavy was headed there already albeit in a slight more controlled fashion. The Starship didn’t make its intended resting place north of Hawaii. Have these folks ever seen early Thor and Atlas testing? The administration REALLY hates Musk as he is NOT a billionaire who panders to them (or anyone). They really want him (and Spacex) to fail not realizing that right now they are ~90% (40 out of 45) of the US launch capacity. There are effectively NO other launch sources for Weather or Military satellites and darned few for commercial ones. The administration is about to shoot itself in the groin with respect to launch services if they keep this up. But they’re not bright enough to know that or involved enough to care, they’re just being spiteful for their own amusement.
tregonsee314: As I have said numerous times, the only thing that matters to these people is power. They don’t care if the entire country fails and there is starvation in the streets, as long as they have power.
Think of Venezuela.
tregonsee314 wrote: “If the Superheavy had threatened something (like having to be destroyed by range safety for heading towards somewhere inhabited) there MIGHT have been a reason for a detailed investigation. But other than the damage from the pad within the compound that flight was nominal until stage separation.”
The problem with the flight termination system (FTS) does not require a detailed investigation. The FTS is not rocket science, it is brute force. What it requires is a charge (explosive) or a method that causes the destruction of the rocket, should the rocket appear to be about to stray from the safe zone.
The failures on the first stage and at stage separation also do not require detailed investigation, because this is a development program. The only safety problem was the delay of the FTS from command to eventual destruction. The FTS caused venting on both stages, but it failed to provide an adequate ignition source for either stage. There is a possibility that ignition failed because the venting was inadequate.
The flight was not nominal from the very beginning. When they chose to launch with three engines out, “nominal” was already out the window (defenestrated). A successful orbital launch became even less likely than had all engines been running. Thus, we know that the object of the exercise was not to verify the reentry plan or the heat shield at reentry. The announcers mentioned on more than one occasion that they were testing not only the rocket but “stage zero,” the launch pad.
The problem with the launch pad (stage zero) is trivial, and the debris was little different than the debris from a pad rocket explosion.
____________
Robert,
You asked:”Am I being paranoid? Or is Messier being naive?”
The empirical evidence, much of which you have provided in your post, shows that SpaceX has intent to perform many iterative test launches in short order and that the FAA has taken much longer than expected to approve these tests. The question is: why is the FAA taking longer? SpaceX clearly does not want to take longer.
Messier has suggested that it is the reaction to the April test, which did not go according to plan. You, Robert, believe that the FAA has changed its attitude toward SpaceX for political reasons.
Messier’s suggestion would be reasonable if this were an operational launch, where all the testing and all the bugs had been worked out. A detailed investigation would be necessary in order to find the problems, hidden deep within the bowels of the system and undiscovered during development and verification testing. However, we have heard no evidence that the problems are deeply rooted in hidden corners of the design. The pad problem is obvious as worse than expected damage to the concrete, and SpaceX already was working on a solution to it. The propellant tanks have a scary proximity to the launch pad, but for seagoing launch platforms this proximity cannot be helped, and SpaceX is clearly testing methods to make their sea platforms work. All the problems we see are due to development of new ideas, methods, and processes. Many of these new ideas, etc. have resulted in surprisingly successful tests, which tells us that the expensive methods that rocket companies have been using can be changed into more efficient methods. Some ideas need more work or need to be scrapped, as several Space ideas have already been over the past couple of decades.
Your belief would be a reasonable, non-paranoid reaction if the administration had similar attitudes for other companies or individuals. If the government is focusing solely on SpaceX or Elon Musk or some other single point, then you may be suffering from some form of conspiracy hypothesis — or conspiracy bias — maybe even delusion. However, if the administration is doing something un-American, such as punishing enemies and rewarding other people for being friends, then an actual conspiracy would exist, no theory needed.
Thus, we can conclude from this analysis that it may not be an either/or question. The question (or rather pair of questions) misses an important third possibility in which both you being paranoid and Messier being naive is possible, or a fourth possibility in which neither paranoia nor naiveté are present.
Are jburn and Phill O correct? Are there other people or companies that the administration is likewise punishing in a pursuit of power? Are there some people or companies that the administration is rewarding for assistance in the pursuit of power? Is the administration being fair to all or has some form of bias leaked into our government? Is the Fourteenth Amendment being followed or or is the law being applied differently to different people, organizations, or companies (“… nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”)? Remember: absolute power absolutely corrupts absolutely.
Anti-Capitalists don’t do Capitalism.
Progressive-Marxists by definition are not ever going to be behave capitalistic, baby.
They work really hard to deny Capitalists any representation, employment in government.
They know they’re all going to die, which is why they go after kids while they can.
The P-M virus must persist!
Edward wrote “Your belief would be a reasonable, non-paranoid reaction if the administration had similar attitudes for other companies or individuals. If the government is focusing solely on SpaceX or Elon Musk or some other single point, then you may be suffering from some form of conspiracy hypothesis — or conspiracy bias — maybe even delusion. However, if the administration is doing something un-American, such as punishing enemies and rewarding other people for being friends, then an actual conspiracy would exist, no theory needed.”
I submit as further evidence the entire list of my blacklist columns, numbering now in the hundreds, and almost all of which were efforts by Democrats (and sometimes the Biden administration itself) to blacklist and oppress anyone who disagreed with them.
I am not paranoid. I am looking coldly at the facts, and deriving a reasonable conclusion from them.
“…the facts..”
You’re home, you’re space. You get to decide all within.
It’s a pretty big Universe.
You don’t engage many people in your own house.
“facts” is a useful filter.
Don’t have to get down into the mud.
I don’t like most people either.
What with the apostrophes?
Pun/Joke. Mea culpa.
Democrats are vindictive and punitive. They target people overtly and act against the interests of Americans without explanation. It’s astounding that the GOP (the few who aren’t compromised or simply RINOs) don’t even bother fighting it. Comer, Gaetz, MTG, Paul, and Jordan sometimes pretend they’re fighting….but don’t. And that’s it. We March the trail of tears to the looming 2024 debacle unsure if the Commies will even allow our candidate to run. We have become total cucks.
None of the popular YouTube rocket channels are willing to say anything critical of Biden and the FAA. I wonder if that is by design. Where being critical of the democrat establishment is a sure fire way to have your channel downgraded by the search algorithm.
it was Warner Wolf: “let’s go to the videotape
Great article, Robert. Thank you.
Elon’s big mistake is and was making Bezos and Boeing’s efforts look weak and pathetic but those two groups support the crooks in DC and the white house so ya, that’s exactly why their doing this slow crawl with all thinks Space X. It’s who you blow and who you know in DC, not who knows how to get things done. But everyone Here knows that already.
Good analysis.
Musk needs to move his launch sites to a less corrupt state, e.g. Mexico or Cuba…
The owned agents of the Chinese government are protecting China’s space program. If they can’t destroy SpaceX they will delay it until the Chinese can reverse engineer everything.
What is old, is new again … Democrats shortchanging our expansion into space, as they focus their attention (and our tax dollars) on their ham-fisted, bull-in-a-china-shop social, economic, and environmental policy.
Just as they did in the 1970’s.
(Jeremy … one word: ITAR. ITAR violation charges are the kind of Ham Sandwich Nation leverage that can bring disfavored billionaires to heel. If Musk wants to continue doing ANY business here, he can’t give them that opening.)
It is easy to believe that after buying Twitter, Elon has lost popularity with the left and their front man, Biden. Prior to Twitter, political pressure designed to keep the government money flowing to old school projects like SLS have been covered by Mr Zimmerman. That said, Musk has some pretty serious political juggling to do. Last week, Chris Chappell of the YouTube channel ‘China Uncensored’ claimed that he had been banned from Twitter and the inference here is that the free speech absolutist, Musk, also has overlords in China. Unfortunately, I’ve not seen any follow up on this story and the banning could have been a mistake by underlings. Regardless, Musk’s investments are threatened by political minefields. At least Biden has some reason to work with Musk, whereas the CCP will steal the technology and give Elon the boot.
The government, depending on who is in control of it at any one time, incentivizes or disincentivizes business and everything else that falls under its purview that it / their ideological political agendas are concerned with.
And these incentivization’s and disincentivizations can be turned into powerful political weapons used in the Political warfare between the opposing political players that the Constitution structures.
And what we are all witness to today are the most extreme examples of these strategies of political warfare being used against one’s ideological political enemies and opponents.
Elon Musk stands ideologically against the current political agenda of the controlling now radical political party machine.
And here is the latest weapon being rolled out by one side of the equation: https://youtu.be/7Fej7G_-i6Q
The Democrats now being soooo radical have forced this information into the light that I am certain the politically empowered within Congress were fine with it being sat on because the next question to be asked would be: Who else, on both sides also have these side deals with foreign entities in exchange for U.S. government considerations? Where might a string of truth like that lead if it were seriously pulled?
Those that inhabit the Politically empowered Realm do not want to go there but they have now IMO been forced to do so because of the existential and paradigm changing extremes the now radical Democrat party has taken things to in the real efforts to eliminate their political opposition.
All is fair in Love and Political warfare.
Review: Strategy Over Morality: https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/strategy-over-morality
Here’s a question for you: Why does Biden want China to rule in space?
So that we can return their favor by waiting until we can steal their technology?
“ Here’s a question for you: Why does Biden want China to rule in space?”
A more important question is who is formulating US domestic and foreign policy? After answering this question you can question motive.
Jeremy Thomas: I post the following every time someone suggests Elon Musk run to some other country:
——————–
Why is it the first reaction of so many people when I post stories like this is to suggest that Elon Musk flee, to run away? Not only can’t he do it (both for legal and practical reasons), it is the worst possibly reaction to this government overreach.
It is time all Americans stopped running. There really is no where else to go. We need to stand and fight, and force the government and its intolerant minions to back down. Otherwise, freedom will continue to lose ground everywhere.
I expect Musk to fight, as he has fought and won previously.
As for moving:
1. Legally he can’t. SpaceX as a rocket company falls until strict federal regulations. No matter where he moves those regulations will apply, especially because much of his work force and materials will come from the U.S.
2. Practically he can’t. The qualified workers and infrastructure doesn’t exist in these other locations. You can’t simply recreate this kind of hi-tech company in South Africa, in Mexico, or any other third world country.
—————–
I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable to believe that the more complicated the rocket gets the longer it will take to do the investigation, up to a point that is. Launching a single stage with a few engines compared to a dual stage that obviously suffered multiple system anomalies isn’t anywhere near the same level. Until the damage to the launch pad and the tank farm issues are repaired and the water deluge system is installed; it’s a waste of time to be complaining about who’s dragging their feet and why another launch hasn’t been approved.
Robert Zimmerman,
You submitted as further evidence the entire list of your blacklist columns, numbering now in the hundreds.
Whoo-ey!
That is a long list.
What really makes your point, though, are the Pushback columns, which demonstrate that even the courts have agreed that The People’s rights are being violated by the very people whose primary duty is to protect those rights. It looks like a large conspiracy, intended to do harm to We the People.
“almost all of which were efforts by Democrats (and sometimes the Biden administration itself) to blacklist and oppress anyone who disagreed with them.”
Sometimes the Biden administration means that the conspiracy reaches well beyond the administration and into other governments, companies, organizations, and even the occasional individual. “Almost all of which were efforts by Democrats” means that it even reaches across political parties.
You have definitely demonstrated that your belief is without doubt a reasonable, non-paranoid reaction.
With that question now out of the way, we are only faced with the other question as to whether Messier is being naive.
Finally,
I think that Jeremy Thomas was not serious about SpaceX moving but was making the point that Mexico and Cuba, as corrupt as they are, are less corrupt than the current U.S. government.
Your blacklist columns have definitely shown an amount of corruption inside and outside the U.S. government.
Welcome to Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, land of the formerly free. Even the final frontier lacks freedom.
Given Doug’s political leanings, it’s not surprising that he claims the government is doing nothing wrong.
Warner Wolf says that.
It seems to me that the burst of flight tests up to Starship #15 ended at that point not because of a change on the part of the FAA but because SpaceX had reached their goal of landing the upper stage. It then turned its attention to the lengthy and technically delayed development of the Raptor engines, heat tiles, and stage 0. What the April flight test shows is that, even after all of that development time, they still hadn’t worked out all of the kinks.
A lot of space advocates have speculated that the FAA was delaying permission for the full stack Starship launch in order let SLS go first. But even after SLS launched, SpaceX appeared to not be ready to launch and probably should have waited longer to install the steel water plate system. Also, imagine how much worse it would have been had SpaceX launched their stack with all of the off-nominal incidents only to be followed shortly thereafter with the near flawless launch of the SLS. What would the media, officials, and public have concluded immediately after the SLS launch? That government can do things better than private companies. In the final analysis, I’m happy that Starship launches second and delayed by a bit.
SpaceX now appears to be back into launching as frequently as they can. Before, Elon would only give vague launch dates that passed until he set a firm date 4/20 so I don’t think that SpaceX was ready to launch before then. Now, he is setting a more firm date (6-8 weeks). He seemed to have inside word from the FAA with them indicating to him that a launch license is forthcoming before the 4/20 launch. So Bob, you do have some data correlation to support your position but I don’t think that it is completely compelling. There are other data that argue against your hypothesis.
DougSpace: As I have said all along, I hope my pessimism about the regulatory actions of the FAA are wrong. But as I have documented repeatedly, the track record of the Washington bureaucracy suggests otherwise. Moreover, the overall oppressive culture of those in charge in DC reinforces my perssimism. Based on these facts, the last thing any private American citizen at this time should be is nonchalant about the actions of that bureaucracy.
If my public complaining helps to put pressure on the Biden administration and the FAA so that they issue a launch license quickly, I say wonderful. At this moment however I remain very skeptical SpaceX will get that permit for an August launch.
DougSpace wrote: “It seems to me that the burst of flight tests up to Starship #15 ended at that point not because of a change on the part of the FAA but because SpaceX had reached their goal of landing the upper stage.”
At which point SpaceX announced that it intended to launch Booster 4 and SN 20 during that summer — two years ago. Instead, the FAA announced that its environmental review would take months longer than expected, eventually announcing an October 2021 date for a public input session. Why the delay at the FAA?
Booster 4 was a rocket powered by Merlin engines, which use kerosene-based RP1. At the time, several people wondered how long it would take to transform the launch support facility from RP1 to methane. The answer turns out to be one year. SpaceX was willing to take that hit in order to get in some development testing early in the development process. Instead, the FAA dragged its feet on authorizing these tests, and it even took the FAA so long that SpaceX had already converted their facilities.
“But even after SLS launched, SpaceX appeared to not be ready to launch and probably should have waited longer to install the steel water plate system.”
Considering that an FAA launch license is necessary for a launch, DougSpace is correct. However, until a year earlier, SpaceX had been preparing for a launch with a Super Heavy with Merlin engines, not Raptor engines. It is clear that had the license been issued in early 2022 that the originally scheduled Starship and Super Heavy would have been the first integrated test unit. Instead, the FAA was slipping its environmental study results month for month.
Another thing that I noticed was that SpaceX was ready to go as soon as the FAA deigned to give it a license for launch.
“SpaceX now appears to be back into launching as frequently as they can. Before, Elon would only give vague launch dates that passed until he set a firm date 4/20 so I don’t think that SpaceX was ready to launch before then.”
Well, there was a firm launch date of 4/17, but there was an acute technical problem, so launch was delayed three days. Even the 4/17 date was chosen immediately after the launch license was issued, so they were waiting for that license, not for Stage 0 to be perfect.
As has been noted on many occasions, everyone thought that the concrete would survive with only a larger amount of degradation of the top layer, not a total destruction of both layers. What people were most concerned about were the launch mount, which had been armor plated in the previous few weeks, while awaiting the long awaited launch license, and the launch tower, which was not much protected despite the damage that occurred to the SLS tower in the December launch.
“It then turned its attention to the lengthy and technically delayed development of the Raptor engines, heat tiles, and stage 0.”
The eagerness to launch with Merlin engines and a still under construction Stage 0 shows that SpaceX was willing to perform its development program the same as it did the Starship landings and the Starlink development flights. Don’t wait for perfection, use what is available now and discover what needs improvement and what works already.
DougSpace has spent too much time observing operational flights and not enough time being a development or test engineer. He assumes that development testing waits for the perfect test article, but it does not.
Robert made a similar mistake when complaining about the first unmanned Orion test flight. In that case, the heat shield, a major development item, was not made of the final material. NASA performed the test flight anyway. NASA did not learn how the final material performs on Orion, but they learned how Orion performs. Development testing does not wait for perfection, otherwise there would never be a development test.
“What the April flight test shows is that, even after all of that development time, they still hadn’t worked out all of the kinks.”
NO DUH Sherlock!
It’s development testing. This means that there are kinks to be worked out. There may even be fundamental conceptual technologies to be worked out. Otherwise it would have been a certification test, like SLS and a host of other recent first launches.
I swear, it is like talking to brick walls, here. I keep having to repeat this over and over again for two freaking months.
To emphasize once more, on the hopeless hope that some people will finally get the concept:
IT IS DEVELOPMENT TESTING. By its very nature it will have problems.
Even first flights that are intended to certify a rocket for operations have problems, it is just that they are supposed to be relatively small problems, as happened on the December Orion circumlunar flight. Perfection is not to be expected, even during operations. Small problems crop up even during operational flights.
Even the Falcon Heavy first launch was not an operational flight but a development flight to find out what went wrong by combining the operational Falcon 9 boosters to a beefed up upper stage. That it succeeded in putting a car in solar orbit was icing, but the cake were the problems to be improved that they found during the launch. Keep in mind that the Apollo 6 test launch found quite a few problems that almost resulted in an obvious failure, but the controllers found solutions in time to make the flight look wildly successful, not the white knuckle flight that it was.
Even the Starship landing tests went remarkably well. Getting 100 tons to flip over like that at the high mark of its flight was unlikely. Even SpaceX thought that the first flight wouldn’t go as well as it did. That flip was amazing, and they didn’t need a few tries to get it right. The general public seems to have become cocky, or gotten high expectations, about development flight testing.
So, with development testing in mind, what the real problem with this test is not that the rocket is not perfect or that the launch pad needs improvement, it is this:
The Flight Termination System did not perform as expected!
This is where everyone’s concern should be focused. This is the biggest, most important, most urgent, top, A-1, fix-it-before-the-next-launch problem. None of the other problems has a level of health and safety, but this one has the top level of safety. The affects of all the other problems were limited to the region of the keep out zones or were mitigated by the FTS. If the FTS fails, then safety and property are in as much danger as a for Chinese rocket launch, which is to say that they are in the hands of God (or luck, for atheists). This may be acceptable for the Chinese, but it is not acceptable for Americans.
In comparison to this, Stage 0 is a nothing problem. Stage 1’s engine-outs are nothing in comparison. Stage2’s failure to separate is nothing at all, not just in comparison, because we know that failed due to the loss of the Stage1 hydraulic system.
I just cannot believe the number of people who say that Starship was not ready for this test not because of the inadequate FTS but for the concrete of the launch pad. Hah. The priorities of some people just astounds me.
The foreseeable problems with the launch pad was the acoustic affects on the rocket. The engines that failed in flight may have been weakened not by debris but by acoustic vibrations or pressures (acoustics being sound — or pressure — waves). Or maybe some other problem. Hopefully SpaceX knows. No one had the foresight to warn SpaceX that the concrete was likely to break apart and fly hundreds of feet in the air.
How does SpaceX find these kinds of problems? By flight tests. Always has. Always will. SpaceX needs just as much flight testing for the integrated Starship/Super Heavy/Stage 0 as it needed for Starlink and the Falcons. Probably more. For the FAA to take so long to issue launch licenses for experimental flights is astonishing. Experimental aircraft that fly over populated areas have an easier time flying than these experimental flights.
Edward wrote, “Robert made a similar mistake when complaining about the first unmanned Orion test flight. In that case, the heat shield, a major development item, was not made of the final material. NASA performed the test flight anyway. NASA did not learn how the final material performs on Orion, but they learned how Orion performs.”
I am always willing to admit error, but in this case I dissent. NASA sold that 2014 test flight as primarily to test the heat shield, even though it had already decided to abandon that heat shield before the test. In other words, they were lying in their press materials, and it was that lie that irked me the most.
Furthermore, the capsule flown was hardly an Orion capsule. It did not carry the environmental systems, the avionics, or in fact almost anything that Orion needs and uses during a real flight. Little else was tested.
Granted, flying the test and getting some results is always better than not flying at all, but NASA’s purpose in doing this flight wasn’t testing, it was convincing the world that Orion/SLS was making progress, when in fact it was not. Note that this flight took place in 2014. It was almost a decade before Orion next flew for the first time on an SLS rocket.
The error being: thinking that they should have waited for a more perfect test article.
NASA may have gotten good PR from the flight, but Lockheed Martin got a milestone payment. Differing purposes.
Waiting for an Orion with the correct heat shield would have delayed the milestone payment, and the change in shield material came from NASA, not the contractor. This is a more political view of a project than a technical view. I didn’t get into engineering for the politics but for the technical aspects. Contractual obligations are supposed to ensure progress, not waste tests.
It wasn’t necessarily worth the cost of the test, as the heat shield was supposed to be a major part of the test, but Lockheed Martin probably should not have had to wait the many years for a better test in order to get its milestone payment. Lockheed Martin had performed correctly, but NASA changed the heat shield material requirement. It is one of the several costs of NASA design or requirement changes long after the design is frozen. It is similar to NASA performing the Ares 1 test in 2010, after Constellation and Ares were cancelled. That test flight was even more useless than the 2014 Orion test flight, because it gave data for a design that would never come to anything. Another contractual obligation, and money wasted on a test. Legally, by Supreme Court ruling, budgeted money must be spent. So much for saving taxpayer money.
Would we have these problems if there were more Capitalism in Space? Maybe. NASA’s fixed price contracts still pay for development, which means that NASA has milestones to ensure they are paying for progress. Perhaps in the future our free market capitalist companies will be ahead of NASA, such as the new space tug industry or the new space servicing or life extension industry, and these milestones will be a thing of the past.
You may be right that more of the service module’s systems were checked out than Orion’s. It most certainly was not the perfect Orion
test article, and the non-flight heat shield was a major reason why. NASA and Lockheed Martin got data points for the previous heat shield, not the operational flight heat shield. However, they also got good data on space navigation, reentry control, splashdown, and parachute performance after time in space and reentry heating.
The main problem Orion had was not that it was running behind schedule but that the schedule for the rocket kept slipping, and Orion kept having to slow down. It was close to ready in 2014 slated to fly about three or four years later. Orion had several years head start on SLS. When Constellation was replaced by SLS (designed by the rocket scientists in Congress rather than the ones at NASA), Orion had been slated to fly only a couple of years later, but SLS wouldn’t need an Orion for many years later.
Although I agree that the 2014 test didn’t give as much useful information as it could have, I understand why they flew a suboptimal test unit.
I have this feeling that Biden—the Col. Henry Blake of presidents, was more than one Radar pulling at him…in terms of energy policy
Kerry is of the ‘shut it all down’ branch.
But there are rumblings going in the other direction:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/for-the-first-time-in-decades-congress-seems-interested-space-based-solar-power/
https://spacenews.com/state-department-framework-seeks-to-coordinate-its-space-policy-activities/
Here is a State Dept winning concept:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=M9dQsRv1XDg&feature=youtu.be
This is the capper:
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-efficiency-lightweight-solar-cells-space-based.html
“When it comes to supplying energy for space exploration and settlements, commonly available solar cells made of silicon or gallium arsenide are still too heavy to be feasibly transported by rocket.”
“The weight of 2D TMDC solar cells is 100 times less than silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells, so suddenly these cells become a very appealing technology.”
With larger rockets, and lighter cells—the door is being kicked over.
I have long felt that part of Biden’s confusion is because he is being pulled. The new State Dept. guys…feeling obsolete, are ignored by Kerry who is a Malthusian miserablist. On the other hand, seeing how B-17s and WWII grew the US out of a morass–more space-positive types latter day New Dealers want something similar.
I know guys here don’t much buy into GW, but bite your tongues on this one.
Powersats are exactly what the launch industry needs right now.
Look, gov’t guys are going to spend money anyway.
Better it were spent on us than go to some African warlord due to foreign aid.
Another aspect to development is that at some point you have learned what you need to know in order to build your flight unit (rocket, spacecraft, space instrument, ground facility, etc.) and it is time to stop testing the concepts and design possibilities and choose the design to use. At this point, it is necessary to shoot the development engineer and keep going with the design engineer. This is when it is prudent for the development engineer to duck and cover. At some point it is necessary to freeze the design and shoot the design engineer and build the thing. This is when it is prudent for the design engineer to duck and cover. During assembly and integration, it is necessary to perform some tests to verify that the design works properly (qualification testing) or that this particular assembly works properly (acceptance testing). The assembly, integration, and verification test engineers don’t have to worry about being shot, because they work on the unit until it is shipped (and some go to the launch site for final integration onto the launch vehicle), at which point they start working on the next unit. This part is an assembly line.
The problem I pointed out with Orion was that NASA didn’t shoot their own design engineer, and he changed the specification on the heat shield. It sounds like a good idea, make it better, but it wreaks havoc for schedule and cost constraints. And if you keep making changes, making it better, then you will never get to the final product. If the Wright Brothers hadn’t abandoned their design phase and moved on to the assembly phase, they would still be designing their first airplane.
The problem we may be seeing with the FAA and Starship is that the FAA may interfere with development level testing, demanding perfection where perfection is undesirable. If you are trying new ideas, concepts, or technologies, you don’t know what perfection is, yet. You don’t even know what good enough is yet. That is what the testing is for, to find good enough so that perfection can be pursued. The FAA, NTSB, and other government agencies are used to handling investigations of operational transportation systems but it is more rare that a developmental system is investigated for safety reasons. Some recent accidents involving self-driving automobiles are an example.
Even if the FAA understands the development concept, if they are helping the administration punish its enemies then they may use the lack of perfection to slow down the Starship development process. That is a punishment indeed.
Flight termination systems are included on operational launch vehicles, because “good enough” is not perfection. Something can still go wrong, and occasionally it does. On developmental flights, something going wrong should be expected. If you think nothing will go wrong, then you should be in the operational phase.
Once “good enough” is reached, an operational version can be designed and built. Perfection comes as experience is gained during operations and iterations are incorporated. Another way to achieve perfection is to go to the next version, such as from the original Falcon 9 through the recoverable/reusable Falcon 9 to the last iteration, Falcon 9, Block 5. One of the complaints, in the early days, about the Air Force hiring SpaceX for launches was that each Falcon 9 (Version 1.0) launched had some design changes from the previous one, so how could SpaceX say that Falcon 9 had launched a few times for enough flight experience to be sure the design worked as is? Even as an operational rocket, SpaceX was still developing its Falcon rockets.
These days, SpaceX is working toward perfection of the reusability concept by making their entire Starship launch vehicle reusable. This is beyond iteration and deep into “next version” territory. Starship improves on the Space Shuttle’s reusability paradigm in ways that NASA didn’t think was possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if SpaceX itself didn’t think it was possible, back when they first thought up the concept.
Edward: Something that bugs me is how everyone assumes the people at the FAA are qualified to analyze Starship and Superheavy and suggest changes or improvements.
No one there is qualified at all to do this. All they can do is either accept the decisions of SpaceX’s engineers, or interfere in ways that can only be negative.
Let me repeat: No one at the FAA has the engineering background sufficient to kibbitz this rocket.
We should also repeat this mantra in almost all situations where government officials stick their noses into other people’s affairs. They don’t have the right knowledge, experience, or training in almost every case, and should simply shut up and get out of the way.
Unfortunately, everyone has for decades assumed that government officials are god’s gift to the world, knowing all and seeing all. Too many still make this assumption, to our dire peril.
Robert Zimmerman,
You wrote: “No one at the FAA has the engineering background sufficient to kibbitz this rocket.”
That is an excellent point.
However, they almost certainly will feel that they have the expertise and maybe even the right to question various other aspects, such as the decision to launch despite not igniting three engines at launch. Starship could only become orbital if Super Heavy were designed to run its engines at 90%, this way the other engines, the operating engines, could possibly make up the difference and get Starship to the a sufficient place at a sufficient velocity for it to reach orbit, possibly by using reserve propellants.
SpaceX may have chosen to launch despite the imperfect engine condition in order to get flight experience, including their new (and bizarre) separation technique. Or, they may have been concerned that the license could be revoked due to political pressure, which had been noted at the time, because an imperfect launch at that time would be better than no launch later.
Were there other factors in the launch decision that we do not know about, and could the FAA question those as well?
We have a couple of commenters here who believe that it was a poor decision to launch before adding maximum protection for the concrete, so perhaps the FAA can question this decision, too. If the FAA wants to punish the government’s enemies, Musk being one of them, then they can come up with a myriad of ways to do so, including pretending technical proficiency in rocket science.
Congress pretended proficiency in rocket science when they told NASA how to design the SLS. If Congress can do it, surely the FAA can do it, too.
“Unfortunately, everyone has for decades assumed that government officials are god’s gift to the world, knowing all and seeing all. Too many still make this assumption, to our dire peril.”
The guys at NASA are pretty smart. They made their own assumptions and stuck with them for decades: reusing rockets isn’t economical. Their evidence was pretty clear: The Space Shuttle Orbiter was definitely uneconomical, and the Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters were just about as expensive to reuse as they were to make from scratch. Unfortunately, the managers at NASA did not choose to try to learn from the failures of both these items to make more economical reusable hardware. Peter Diamandis (the X-Prize), Burt Rutan (Scaled Composites), and the engineers at Blue Origin and SpaceX made the choice that NASA’s management did not. These four were successful, and now many others are working on reusability, too, such as Rocket Lab.
So who are the ones with the background, the knowledge, and the gumption to make industry disrupting technological breakthroughs? It isn’t the guys at the government. NASA’s people are working for managers who now prefer to play it safe.
Even if playing it safe means punishing the current administration’s enemies.