SpaceX to FAA: Allow launches to resume before completion of July 11th launch failure investigation
SpaceX on July 15, 2024 submitted a request to the FAA to quickly determine that the July 11th Falcon-9 launch failure posed no threat to public safety, and thus allow the company to resume Falcon 9 launches before the investigation of that failure is completed.
The FAA has two means of allowing a rocket to return to flight operations following a mishap. The first is that it approves a launch operator-led mishap investigation final report, which would include “the identification of any corrective actions.” Those actions need to be put in place and all related licensing requirement need to be met.
The other option is for a public safety determination to be issued. This would be an option if “the mishap did not involve safety-critical systems or otherwise jeopardize public safety,” according to the FAA.
“The FAA will review the request, and if in agreement, authorize a return to flight operations while the mishap investigation remains open and provided the operator meets all relevant licensing requirements,” the FAA wrote on its website.
SpaceX is apparently expecting the FAA to quickly approve this request, as it has now scheduled its next Falcon 9 launch for July 19, 2024, at the end of this week.
The lower level workers at the FAA probably want to get out of the way, but they have to obey orders from above, and it is my suspicion that the White House is applying pressure to make life hard for SpaceX. As I have noted, the FAA has not required the same level of due diligence from either NASA and its SLS rocket, or Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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SpaceX on July 15, 2024 submitted a request to the FAA to quickly determine that the July 11th Falcon-9 launch failure posed no threat to public safety, and thus allow the company to resume Falcon 9 launches before the investigation of that failure is completed.
The FAA has two means of allowing a rocket to return to flight operations following a mishap. The first is that it approves a launch operator-led mishap investigation final report, which would include “the identification of any corrective actions.” Those actions need to be put in place and all related licensing requirement need to be met.
The other option is for a public safety determination to be issued. This would be an option if “the mishap did not involve safety-critical systems or otherwise jeopardize public safety,” according to the FAA.
“The FAA will review the request, and if in agreement, authorize a return to flight operations while the mishap investigation remains open and provided the operator meets all relevant licensing requirements,” the FAA wrote on its website.
SpaceX is apparently expecting the FAA to quickly approve this request, as it has now scheduled its next Falcon 9 launch for July 19, 2024, at the end of this week.
The lower level workers at the FAA probably want to get out of the way, but they have to obey orders from above, and it is my suspicion that the White House is applying pressure to make life hard for SpaceX. As I have noted, the FAA has not required the same level of due diligence from either NASA and its SLS rocket, or Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
SLS worked–Starliner? Yeah–that needs looking at.
My complaint about the SLS is that it should have been flying 5 years after the Shuttle program shut down. It should be old hand by now.
Starliner needs to be totally redesigned to make it fully serviceable. Do not worry, I work on cars for fun and have the very same complaints about modern cars. My next project is replacing the Phazers and timing sensors on a Ford f-150. Which are not accessible without taking the whole front end off the truck and removing the whole front of the engine. 15 hours of work for me.
Engineers tend to jamb too much stuff into too small of spaces and forget about servicing after assembly.
If I had Elon Musk money, I’d pay you to build a largely computer free car made to be easily worked on.
My complaint about the SLS is that it should have been flying 5 years after the Shuttle program shut down. It should be old hand by now.
That was the whole public justification offered for it, right? That they could leverage all that legacy Shuttle hardware and infrastructure to cut the costs and development schedule. As Bill Nelson put it in 2011, “The cost of the rocket over a five- to six-year period in the NASA authorization bill was to be no more than $11.5 billion. This costs $10 billion for the rocket. If we can’t do a rocket for $11.5 billion, we ought to close up shop.” Of course, as we all know, the real reason was not about leveraging stuff, but preserving jobs (and campaign donations).
Of course, had Griffin gone for SLS (or something that looked like it) straight up as the sole rocket for Constellation in 2005, I suppose that would be an obvious way to move the schedule up five years (2017?). Of course, that just begs the question of what NASA would have *done* with it. Orion wouldn’t have been ready, let alone any mission hardware.
NASASpaceFlight has a video on the FAA’s role in this kind of investigation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU-hKxKUrxY (17 minutes: “Why Can’t Falcon 9 Fly?”)
John Galloway lists several reasons why the FAA would get involved and checks-off which reasons don’t apply, a couple that might, and a couple that he thinks do apply to give the FAA its involvement. He also reminds us, at the end, [Spoiler Alert? Maybe?] of what Robert tells us: The FAA has some limited knowledge of spaceflight problems, but they don’t know the rocket, so SpaceX does the investigation on its own rocket and reports its findings to the FAA.
My own thought is that this almost certainly is not a design error but a quality control error in the expendable upper stage. Unlike the booster stages, none of the upper stages are can be reused after proving that they are assembled properly.