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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."
SpaceX is based on materials science that doesn't exist and risks payloads as long as they don't have to pay for them, all based on ignoring all contrary evidence. Read to the end of the abstract. Tesla will never be safer than regular cars, and it will never even be as safe as regular cars. It is statistically impossible.
That's actually a much higher safety rating than NASA'a man rating requirement. It is also a much higher safety rating than any manned system to date.