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Government Watchdog Says SpaceX Falcon 9s Are Prone To Cracks (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Engadget article: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets apparently have a serious issue that could delay the company's manned missions. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Government Accountability Office investigated both Boeing and SpaceX -- the corporations that won NASA's space taxi contracts -- and found that Falcon 9's turbine blades suffer from persistent cracks. GAO's preliminary report says these turboblades' tendency to crack is a "major threat to rocket safety," since they pump fuel into Falcon 9's rocket engines. NASA's acting administrator Robert Lightfoot told the WSJ that government officials have known about the issue for months or even years. The agency even told SpaceX that the cracks are too much risk for manned flights. A spokesperson said SpaceX has "qualified [its] engines to be robust" to cracks, but it's now "modifying the design to avoid them altogether."
Shun the non-believer! Shuuuuuun, Shuuuun!
No, you should try comprehending the abstract. Solid and liquid rocket motors are about as different as internal combustion engines and steam engines. Pointing to some generic study about some arbitrary solid rocket propellant as if that's supposed to mean anything whatsoever concerning a rocket that does not use solid rocket propellants of any kind just makes you look you don't know anything about the topic being discussed.
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
Why don't you share how horrible a 0.04% launch failure rate is.
Let me help, that's 1 failure every 2500 launches. If there were 5 people on board and they launched 100 rockets per year that would mean an average of 1/5th of a death per year.
And that statistic doesn't take into account the crew capsule escape mechanism.
About 2 million people a year die in the US.
Go see how many astronauts have died in car accidents. None in a Tesla, so far.