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SpaceX Plan To Fuel Rockets With People Aboard Raises Alarm Bells (fortune.com)
Several space industry experts that advise NASA have told the US space agency there are safety risks in a proposal by Elon Musk's SpaceX to fuel its rockets while astronauts are on board. From a report on Fortune: "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. Stafford said the group's concerns were heightened after an explosion of an unmanned SpaceX rocket while it was being fueled on Sept. 1. The causes of that explosion are still under investigation. 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.
That's not really fair. Of the set of things that can result in a rocket explosion "putting the explosive parts into the rocket" has to rate pretty highly.
If you can choose between fueling the rocket before the payload is aboard and fueling it after the payload is aboard, than all else being equal after is the obvious choice as that preserves the payload in the event of a fueling accident leading to loss of the rocket.
This is the kind of question that was asked after the Apollo 1 fire. Yes, there are risks in spaceflight. That doesn't mean that there isn't way to mitigate risks, or that undue risk has to be taken.
I imagine the benefit to fueling with the people already in the capsule is that you'll have less liquid oxygen boil off before launch, if you can launch as soon as the thing is fueled. Is that worth risking the lives of people? No, especially as you can likely fix it with a procedural change.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What are you even talking about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
These systems have been around forever, SpaceX is (once again) doing nothing new or special. They only work when there is forewarning, and that is unlikely to be had during a fueling mishap. This isn't a cartoon or action movie, you can't just outrun an explosion in progress by jumping fast and wearing cool shades.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When the "old timers" are the ones who put people on the moon and the new kids on the block are having trouble making shit not explode on their way to LEO, then maybe you should listen to the "old timers". Especially when there's no fucking reason to fuel up while crew are aboard.
I find 60 or so years of experience by people who what watched friends die in launch pad accidents somewhat more credible than less than 15 years experience by people who have never launched a human being into space.
I know which group I'd like to have making safety decisions if I were sitting on top of that bomb.
You don't need a degree to be a "guy" of something.
If you want to pretend that Tesla, Solar City, SpaceX, and the greatest boondoggle of them all - the Hyperloop, weren't made possible because of my tax dollars, go right ahead. Doesn't change the facts. Also, PayPal is about as beneficial to society as Ticketmaster and inflamed hemorrhoids.