back to article SpaceX's Falcon anomaly could have serious implications for the space industry

SpaceX has confirmed the payload of last week's Starlink launch is pretty much a total writeoff. However, standing down Falcon 9 as authorities look into the incident could have major implications for the space industry. The July 11 (local time) launch from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base was the latest …

  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    FAA?

    Haven't we just decided that regulatory agencies no longer have any say in the USA ?

    1. Dimmer Silver badge

      Re: FAA?

      We do still need regulations so everyone plays nice.

      Congress just can’t make vague laws that they can blame someone else if there is blowback. (Management 101)

      1. Like a badger

        Re: FAA?

        The recent judgement wasn't that regulators had no say, but that they could not interpret the law they enforce. Because of decades of poor drafting of legislation, there's lots of areas where a regulator might find there to be little clarity - hitherto they'd use their judgement, and the courts would generally back them. The recent judgement basically sets a precedent that only the legislature makes laws, and the interpretation of laws sits with the courts, not regulators.

        Congress always have and always will make vague laws, but in future they'll have nobody but the courts to blame for any blowback. As one consequence, the courts will be clogged up with all the shitbag corporations of America (most of them) trying to minimise regulatory oversight.

        It's also interesting to think how all of this would have played (and may yet) if the FAA and NTSB have to operate to the written word of legislation - how much do politicians and policy officers know about technology, aviations, or indeed any real world matter? And if the law is written without any understanding of the matters it applies to, without proper professional interpretation, what then?

        It is worth noting that whilst the Texas court concerned is unsurprisingly anti-regulators, the key thing here is that the Supreme Court (stuffed with his lackeys by TOJ in his last presidency) have upheld it, and that's why it is a big deal. There would seem to be no reason to expect the situation to be changed, but this judgement is going to be bad for certain stakeholders and good for others. The people it is good for are investors, corporations, and howling MAGA types. For citizens at large, the environment, healthcare, food, public safety it could well turn out to be a disaster.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: FAA?

          Always remembering that a lot of those citizens are also included in the investors, whether they realise it or not.

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            Re: FAA?

            True, but $100 in your 401k isn't much use when your home gets destroyed due to lack of oversight.

        2. Orv Silver badge

          Re: FAA?

          It's going to result both in less regulation in some cases, and more rent-seeking in others. For example, other players like ULA could sue to argue that the FAA is using too much interpretation when regulating SpaceX, and should cut them less slack. It will become a stick corporations use against each other as well as against regulators.

          1. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: FAA?

            Yeah there is going to be a lot of internecine warfare clogging up the courts, as instead of e.g. filing complaints with the FAA or FCC or whatever over their competitor's actions, they'll have to go to court. And a decision that might in many cases be made in a matter of weeks will take years before appeals are exhausted. Great deal if you're a lawyer in a regulated field, not so great for the workload of the courts though.

        3. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: FAA?

      Er, the FAA were mentioned in the article... What's your point? SpaceX have no motivation to take shortcuts with their investigation into the root cause of this anomaly.

      The rapidly with which SpaceX have chased down issues in the past isn't because they've taken shortcuts, but because so much of their manufacturing is in house - they're not chasing up lots of subcontractors across the country.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: FAA?

        "Er, the FAA were mentioned in the article... What's your point? SpaceX have no motivation to take shortcuts with their investigation into the root cause of this anomaly."

        You could equally argue that Boeing would have no motivation to take shortcuts with investigations.

        1. StudeJeff

          Re: FAA?

          You could make that argument, but the evidence shows Boeing is more interested in the short term bottom line, SpaceX is trying to change the world... you might say SpaceX has a higher calling than Boeing.

          And it's a real shame, the old Boeing would be behaving like SpaceX when problems crop up, instead of trying to sweep them under the rug.

          1. Orv Silver badge

            Re: FAA?

            SpaceX is trying to make money as fast as possible, just like everyone else. Don't fool yourself.

            1. eldel

              Re: FAA?

              Of course they are - they just have a more realistic idea of what needs to be done to do that. Boeing (and ULA) are fixed in a mindset of cost plus contracts where finding issues and fixing them was a profit center. Now it's a cost center and the companies are run by MBAs and their magic spreadsheets. SpaceX on the other hand have more skin in the game - a lot of those launches are 'internal' so they have a real interest in them being as reliable as possible.

            2. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

              Re: FAA?

              That doesn't make StudeJeff wrong. Only his argument is about the morality of profit-seeking where lives are at stake (wave to those two braves on the ISS as they go past), where yours is about the morality of capitalism.

          2. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: FAA?

            you might say SpaceX has a higher calling than Boeing

            Keep telling yourself that.

            SpaceX is rumored to be doing an IPO in the relatively near future. They are not some non profit that exists solely to try to do good in the world. You're living in a fantasy world (or suckling on Musk's brown eye) if you think otherwise.

            Boeing has earned their "think the worst" snap judgment so you shouldn't automatically think the worst about SpaceX in every situation as they haven't earned that. But they haven't had a completely clean track record either so some skepticism is surely warranted.

            1. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Re: FAA?

              SpaceX having an IPO will likely result in some VERY close attention to their safety standards

              They have one of the highest injury rates in American industry - and are already under investigation as a result

              1. DS999 Silver badge

                Re: FAA?

                SpaceX having an IPO will likely result in some VERY close attention to their safety standards

                Why? Wall Street doesn't care about that, and stuff like OSHA applies equally to publicly traded and privately held companies.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: FAA?

        They'd probably like to keep the insurance rates down. if the reliability of launches becomes a problem the insurance rates will cause people to look for other launch vehicles. Maybe ariane.

        1. bananape4l

          Re: FAA?

          yea that 364-1 record is in danger of losing to an unproven launcher(s) -- other launchers were also mentioned. so eggscuseme , but maybe not. maybe in like 30 years when ariane also catches up to 300 launches so we can do a fair comparison no?

    3. UnknownUnknown

      Re: FAA?

      I can’t see rockets, flying or space being mentioned in the US Constitution either,, much about land forces and the Navy but not the USAF or Space.

      … so Federal Overreach anyway, for those of you who believe in a spherical Earth and orbits.

  2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

    Starliner rescue?

    Up until now, it's always been assumed that SpaceX could launch a Crew Dragon to bring the two astronauts apparently stuck on the ISS back to Earth.

    This may have to make NASA think again about this, at least until Falcon 9 is flying again.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Starliner rescue?

      Crew Dragon does require Falcon 9 to fly again... Maybe you meant until Falcon 9 flies a few unmanned missions first?

      In any case, Crew Dragon doesn't require a crew to be launched and rendezvous with the ISS.

      Sending an uncrewed Dragon would get the Starliner crew home, but wouldn't help in relieving other ISS crew who are due a rotation.

      1. roytrubshaw
        Headmaster

        Re: Starliner rescue?

        The problems occurred during an engine relight. Missions to the ISS do not require this. So in the worst case it would be pretty low risk to launch an empty Crew Dragon to the ISS.

        This looks like a manufacturing problem rather than a design fault, there have been over 340 Merlin 1D Vacuum engines without this problem and several thousand Merlin 1D engines (9 x M1Ds per flight) without this fault.

        I would guess they will spend more time dealing with FAA reporting requirements than doing the root cause analysis.

        1. bazza Silver badge

          Re: Starliner rescue?

          It's trickier than you think. If there's a chance the booster can fail (like it did) and it's carrying a payload that is expected to substantially survive reentry (and Dragon will), it has to be assumed that it will do so and drop it down on someone's head.

          And, as the US has signed a treaty promising not to do such things (as have every other country pretty much - space faring or not) it's unlikely that the FAA would permit it (the FAA being the US's way of ensuring that its commercial operators do not compromise those treaty obligations).

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Starliner rescue?

            Particularly because this launch was from Vandenberg in California - so it could conceivably fall on something, or somebody, expensive.

            1. Gene Cash Silver badge

              Re: Starliner rescue?

              US launches are always out over the ocean. If something fails during launch, it'll mostly make a big splash.

              If it starts turning toward somewhere populated, there's a guy with a button to press to make sure it doesn't go that far. Edit: there's also the new automated range safety system that SpaceX pioneered and now Boeing and ULA use, that checks the GPS course and blows up if it does not match what it should.

              China, well, they don't care. Even on nominal missions they drop stages on villages. (and blame it on SpaceX and the Americans. Seriously.)

              1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

                Re: Starliner rescue?

                >US launches are always out over the ocean. If something fails during launch, it'll mostly make a big splash.

                I thought that was why they launched things from Florida or Texas, an oops isn't likely to do any damage

                1. bananape4l

                  Re: Starliner rescue?

                  it's technically to get the boost of the fat earth spinning. not hitting stuff is secondary. but also the coast launch helps this. in russia they launch from near moscow. there are no technical reasons for it other than they don't have a southern spaceport that they trust. and it doesn't hurt so bad to do the polar launches. that they like to do.

              2. bazza Silver badge

                Re: Starliner rescue?

                If the booster fails to get its payload properly into orbit it can still easily cross the Atlantic, do a couple of orbits and get dragged back down, possibly over land and possibly on to someone somewhere.

                That’s essentially what happened in this launch. The second stage underperformed and delivered payloads into an orbit with too much drag.

            2. Orv Silver badge

              Re: Starliner rescue?

              Vandenberg sits on the sort of corner of a south-facing section of coast. They use it for launches to polar orbits BECAUSE they can launch to the south without overflying anything. Once they're past the Channel Islands (which are mostly uninhabited) there's nothing but open ocean until Antarctica.

          2. Gene Cash Silver badge

            Re: Starliner rescue?

            No, the booster did not fail, the second stage engine failed.

            There's a lot less chance the booster will fail.

            Note that the second stage is expendable, and the Vacuum Merlin is specific to it, and thus the engine will always be brand new and untested.

            The booster and first stage engines are now gaining a reliability track record that literally nothing else has. You can point to an engine and say it's already made 8 flights with no issues.

            Previously, only the Space Shuttle Main Engines could say that.

            1. Gene Cash Silver badge

              Re: Starliner rescue?

              > Previously, only the Space Shuttle Main Engines could say that.

              Actually, one of the SSMEs had a problem related to a faulty repair that caused a pin to come loose and tear 3 cooling tubes open on STS-93. This caused it to leak fuel, and so it ended up being 15ft/sec short on velocity at shutdown, which had to be made up by the OMS. They changed to replacing damaged oxidizer posts, instead of plugging them.

              So far, that's the only failure that a "standard" expendable rocket would not have had.

              1. mantavani

                Re: Starliner rescue?

                Really amazing that STS-93 made it to orbit, and Chandra along with it, at all. A billion-to-one coincidence that a serious electrical short occurred at the same as the engine issue, accidentally mitigating it and preventing what should have been a squeaky-bum-time contingency abort. Worth reading about!

                1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

                  Re: Starliner rescue?

                  Wasn't that the point of their famous Powerpoint engineering?

                  If you have a 100,000 components whose failure can cause the loss of a Shuttle, and they are all 99% reliable then the whole shuttle is 99.99,9999 % reliable !

            2. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Re: Starliner rescue?

              SSME were heavily inspected between flights and lots of components replaced even if not "refurbished"

              Merlins are a whole different level of ruggedness and reusability

        2. Mishak Silver badge

          Re: Starliner rescue?

          Whilst the engine finally gave up during the relight, the oxygen leak clearly started during the first burn, and there would be no certainty that a similar issue would not lead to a failure during the first burn.

          It will be interesting to see what they determine to be the probable cause.

        3. cray74

          Re: Starliner rescue?

          The problems occurred during an engine relight. Missions to the ISS do not require this.

          Does the Dragon use its own engines for the circularization burn, or does SpaceX use an unusual direct flight plan to the ISS? Traditionally, second stages fire ~45 minutes into flight for circularization. (In SpaceX's case, the second stage would fire a third time to de-orbit the stage after capsule separation.)

  3. jonsg
    Alert

    First in-flight mission failure for nine years

    SpaceX is, of course, looking deeply into what went wrong. But let's not forget that this is their first in-flight mission failure since 2015, on mission #19. This was mission #354. In the history of spaceflight, that's an unheard-of reliability rate for a launch platform.

    It's also worth noting that, unlike the lower-stage booster*, the upper stage is not reused: a new one is built for every mission, so every flight is a shakedown flight. Rather like the SLS, in fact.

    Clearly there was either a manufacturing error for this upper stage, or it was damaged during stacking, or there was a materials fault. Whichever it is, the authorities and SpaceX are absolutely correct to be going into analysis to determine the cause, and set it right. That's standard aerospace practice.

    Would I happily fly in a Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 launch platform? Definitely. Don't forget: the payloads were undamaged and were deployed; it's just the rocket motor that blew up.

    Would I fly atop a Falcon Heavy? No. Not enough launches to establish a safety pattern yet.

    In a Starship? No way on Earth! At least not until they've proven it as reliable as F9 is now.

    No, I'm not a SpaceX simp. I'm a former satellite engineer who's been impressed by their reliability.

    (* In fairness, some boosters are contractually single-use. Personally, I'd prefer to use one that's got flight heritage, but I'm not writing cheques on Government accounts.)

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: First in-flight mission failure for nine years

      Also, this anomaly would not have prevented a successful Dragon mission to the ISS, since the second stage engine isn't relit on an ISS mission.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: First in-flight mission failure for nine years

        Maybe. The leak was quite substantial.

        The engine needs to burn for longer.

        Would there have been enough oxygen left to complete it?

        Would the engine have survived the rest of the burn, or would it have gone pop after another minute?

        That said, the Dragon capsule itself has a fair amount of on-board propulsion and IIRC can safely abort at any time, so it's unlikely the astronauts would have been at serious risk even if the mission had to abort.

  4. Tom7

    Surely it would be better to track this down to a design fault or a quality control issue, either of which could be rectified?

    Better than if they just shrug their shoulders and said, "Oh well, it was an isolated anomaly, let's try another one..."

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Nobody is expecting SpaceX to shrug their shoulders on this. Remember that the cargo they lost was theirs, just as will be the case for their future Starlink missions, and their reputation for reliability is a commercial asset when they sell their launch services to others. It is absolutely in their interests to find the root cause and fix it, just as it has always been.

      It's an interesting question - to an engineer - as to how to find faults in a piece of hardware that can't be examined hands-on. Obviously there is telemetry that might offer clues. And some companies use high resolution cameras to record the assembly at every stage of the production process - I don't know if SpaceX uses such a system.

      1. bazza Silver badge

        Beyond telemetry, it is indeed involves manufacturing records keeping, such as high res camers and whole lot more besides. All the QC/QA data from the manufacturing process becomes useful. This ought to go back to things as primitive as material sample libraries, and traceability of particular components to particular materials batches.

        Lockheed pioneered a lot of that working on the A12/SR71 back in the 1950, 1960; it turned out that their design and titanium in particular were unforgiving of poor QC/QA, and it took them a long time to develop a materials acquisition / manufacturing methodology that could produce serviceable aircraft. The acquisition of consistently high quality titanium stock was made very difficult by the fact that it was difficult (from a security point of view) to say what they were actually doing with it. They learned so much about titanium and its engineering properties and how to handle it in that program.

        If it turns out in SpaceX that there's some manufacturing data missing because a QC/QA step was omitted but signed off as "passed", that causes all sorts of consequences.

        You can also use design analysis. If you think a widget has exploded, you can look at the design and calculate what sort of possible events or property could cause it to explode. You can then go looking for telltale signs in whatever telemetry and manufacturing data you have got. Previous faults have been determined from guessing that a tank must have come loose, and indeed seeing loud "clanging" sounds in what a microphone has picked up as the tank moved and hit things.

      2. Gene Cash Silver badge

        If you watch the SpaceX launches on YouTube, they show the engineering camera views of both sides of the second stage engine.

        You could see the tons of extra ice forming, and the insulation foil that's usually slack, puffing up like a bag of popcorn. There was an obvious leak.

        1. Raphael

          The insulation foil does that on every one of their launches I've watched.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            re: The insulation foil does that on every one of their launches I've watched

            @Raphae said:

            > The insulation foil does that on every one of their launches I've watched.

            Can't recall seeing that. The venting oxygen was also something new, causing the build-up of “ice”.

            --

            Now that I've switched back on Microsoft telemetry (spyware), the disk churn has stopped ?

            1. Raphael

              Re: re: The insulation foil does that on every one of their launches I've watched

              maybe I am mistaken and it's the toggle between different cameras but the below from previous launches is what I am referring to

              https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1795583341363949684/video/1

              https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1786156323878682779/video/1

              https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1774194152009568366/video/1

              The icing is of course not normal.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: re: The insulation foil does that on every one of their launches I've watched

                > The icing is of course not normal.

                It does indeed balloon. Maybe the ice caused a stuck valve?

  5. CountCadaver Silver badge

    RUD - Rapid Unexpected Deflagration/disassembly??

    See above for possible acronym meaning

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: RUD - Rapid Unexpected Deflagration/disassembly??

      It's generally taken to be Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.

  6. bazza Silver badge

    Er...

    From the article:

    The challenge now facing SpaceX is proving that last week's incident was an isolated one and not a design or quality control issue showing up as the company ramps up its launch cadence.

    Whilst I know what its getting at, it's the wrong way round. Stuff doesn't just break, there is always a reason why. It might not matter for your BBQ or MacBook, but it does matter when you're putting volunteer / paying crew on top of something. There has to be corrective actions to ensure that it is an isolated incident. The "proof" that that has been successful lies in future flights passing off without a repeat of this event.

    Thing is, they're not being allowed to gain that proof by conducting future launches (and nor should they, and it would be only circumstantial even if they were). So, there has to be some sort of analysis saying why this happened first. There is no aspect of that analysis that is appealing or short, because of the various implications. Chief of these is that just when they thought they had a solid process and were executing it well to deliver crew-raterd reliability, it turns out they do not.

    This kind of thing can get a bit meta, but if whatever process that has been followed to demonstrate that their approach is correct has itself gone wrong, then all conclusions arising from that meta process are questionable. This does have the potential to mean starting again from scratch; if whatever caused this turns out to be an oversight of some sort (and it will - it's the only reason why a good design gets built wrong), then where else may there be gaps in the QC/QA coverage? Running that through the entire supply chain takes time.

    There are three possible scenarios.

    First, a QC/QA process was skipped, paperwork falsified. That'd be really bad, because it means someone wasn't doing their job properly. This is the kind of thing that can happen in agressive management systems with unrelenting work and sharp deadlines. Sounds familiar? (cough Boeing cough). If that's what it turns out to be, then 1) someone is in a lot of trouble, 2) so is the management, 3) FAA may limit the production rate to take the heat off the staff (look at what's going on inside Boeing right now), and 4) the company's auditing of its own QC/QA process is at fault.

    Second, if it's a QC/QA process design issue (i.e. we weren't looking hard enough for problems), then that one has to be corrected and one really should then look at all your other QC/QA processes.

    Third, if it is a design issue then that too has consequences, but it runs deeper back into the engineering team; why was their design wrong, and what else have they got wrong? Does there have to be an audit of the design reviews? Will there have to be some more design reviews if the existing ones are found wanting (e.g. lack of stress analyses, undue optimism on material properties, etc).

    None of these are particularly quick to address and do properly. A rapid return to flight would require some other explanation, which I'm prepared to accept could be very convincing. But, I don't really see what that could be. "It just broke" is simply shorthand for saying, "we weren't looking closely enough".

    Oversights do have a habit of creeping out of the darkness in time. Soyuz - that most reliable of Soviet / Russian launchers - had a failure not so long ago after literally decades of getting it right. What went wrong is that some pipes - the routing of which was not part of the detailed design - just for once got assembled with a LOX and a hydrazine pipe being on the same mounting bracket. The LOX froze the hyrdrazine through the bracket. Oops.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Fair points

      Hi -- those are good observations. The point we wanted to make is that, in our opinion, SpaceX needs to reassure everyone that there isn't a deep-rooted systemic problem that will potentially affect all future launches, and that this is a one-off that can be identified and corrected.

      Happy to make that clearer.

      C.

    2. TheFifth

      Re: Er...

      I'd put my money on it being a QC/QA issue, either due to a change in process in the name of efficiency or pressure on the workforce to work harder and faster. Likely in the name of keeping up with the increased cadence of launches. Obviously I have no way of knowing this, but it was the first thing that jumped into my head when I saw the launch.

      The Falcon 9 has an incredible success record, so either they've bumped into an edge case, or something has changed. I'm betting on the latter, but happy to be proved wrong.

      Just look at Boeing for an example of how easily QC/QA can slip.

  7. tehstu

    Falcon vs Shuttle

    That was an odd comment to make, because it invites other comparisons such as the Shuttle's ability to repair deployed satellites. Let me know when a Falcon can facilitates an HST gyroscope repair mission.

    1. Raphael

      Re: Falcon vs Shuttle

      The Polaris Dawn was meant to be demonstrating that it's something they may be able to do.

    2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

      Re: Falcon vs Shuttle

      Oh yes the Space Shuttle an early example of recycling...

  8. Philo T Farnsworth Silver badge

    Kaboom.

    SpaceX boss Elon Musk was blunter and said the restart "resulted in an engine RUD." While we like a three-letter-acronym as much as the next person – a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly – it's safe to say that something probably went bang.

    In space, no one can hear you go "BANG!"

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Kaboom.

      Unless they’re onboard! You’d hear it through thebstructure

      1. Mishak Silver badge

        Re: Kaboom.

        I think it was a Rocketlabs launch that showed video with audio from on board the booster during stage separation - you could quite clearly hear the second stage engine light due to the gasses impinging on the booster, so you can sometimes hear in space (though only because the bit you're in isn't a vacuum).

    2. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Kaboom.

      In space no one can hear you bang

      So many possibilities ....

  9. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    Prediction, SpaceX and Falcon will repeat the story of the Russias and the R7.

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