Slashdot Mirror
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."
He hasn't taken quality control seriously in any of his ventures, that is why they are all get-rich-quick schemes.
I mean this literally... other than rocket scientists, who cares? Every decade or two, when it's time to launch a new rocket, I go to the rocket store, and I buy something that they have in stock, within my budget. I couldn't care if it had cracked turbine blades, uncracked turbine blades, or FairyDust turbine blades. A rocket is a rocket is a rocket.
Asses who let smelly obnoxious indo-chimps with phony degrees into the country.
Shun the non-believer! Shuuuuuun, Shuuuun!
How all the positive stories about Tesla and SpaceX make reference to Elon but all the negative stories don't even mention him in the summary and often (as in this case) in the article.
Space fuckers probing ass cracks?!? Whaaaaat?
Falcon 9 and the space shuttle are the only rockets whose engines have survived the launch so that they could have been inspected. And similar cracks have been found on shuttle engines too. Many other rocket engines very probbly have generated similar cracks during their burn, but those have not been inspected because the engines have gone to the bottom of the ocean.
There have been 28 launches of falcon. During those 28 launches, 279 Merlin 1-series engines have been used, with only 1 major engine problem. And even in that case, the rocket delivered the primary payload to the desired orbit; Each falcon 9 has 10 engines and only on of those 10 engines is critical whose failure leads to mission failure.
So, until now, the engines have had 99.64% reliability, and due the engine redundancy, only 10% of engine failures means mission failure on most launches(upper stage engine may not fail), meaning mission failure probability of 0.04% due failing engine if the engines keep working equally well in the future than they previously have been working.
No, the this turbine thing is not a big problem. Bigger problems are elsewhere, and spaceX is improving the turbine blades. They will continue launching the version with the weak turbine blanes for some time, and it's very unlikely it will cause ANY problems at all, and then later the will release the block 5 model of the rocket with more robust turbine blades.
It seem that the whole issue is "leaked" by some guy who is pissed to spaceX/Elon for something and the media is always eager to post this kind of "leaks" without really understanding what it is all about.
how the Egyptians used to do it, but getting up to 17,000 mph to maintain orbit is the hard part
As Elon would say, the cracks may simply lead to Rapid Unscheduled Passenger Disembarkation.
#DeleteChrome
Redesigning the entire engine to avoid any cracks, despite the cracks not posing a threat, just so we feel safer.
Manned spaceflight results in massive overdesign, to necessarily reduce the possibility of loss of life.
The cost of this overdesign, both in terms of dollars and in things like weight that compromise the science of the mission itself, is staggering, and does not offset any added utility of having the human aboard in the first place. Space Station? A complete waste. The whole thing should be done by robots, not humans. Sending a man to the moon or mars? A feel good venture at best.
Hematite angel forbearance
three angular bottle
freedom whisper elephant
cellophane breathe soliloquy
orange
banish
I think somebody said that over the past year or so.
While an important safety issue, it's good that it is identified and plans are in place to fix them before the Falcon is considered man-rated.
Excelsior!
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Safety regulations are onerous and expensive to comply with. Trump should just get rid of them.
More half-assed crap brought to you by the person so worshipped here.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I am not a rocket scientist, and I do not play one on TV either. How does the turbine function in this rocket?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
SpaceX's engines still have a pretty good flight history.
I wonder if the competitor's engines have the same level of scrutiny.
Could be a case of X's engines are the worst around except for all the other options.
On all F9 history only 1 engine have failed. And that rocket has 9 engines. The other 8 compensated and the primary objective was ok.
Also GAO does not find technical problems....
Spacex and Nasa found it, a long time ago.
GAO only predicts it can be a cause for delays beyond 2018.
Yet, it was man rated. So was Apollo 14-17. Apollo 1 burned up during a test. They were man rated, yet much less reliable than the Falcon 9. No rocket is perfect.
This is NASA, they're pretty anal about manned spaceflight. You damn well better engineer the turbines to get rid of the cracks.
There is a huge potential for savings with SpaceX's model for launching and reusing rockets, but it all collapses given just a few failures.
If they get very high reliability of their rockets, reuse will end up being a cost destroyer. If they blow some rockets up the reuse savings will disappear.
The "article" (four paragraphs?) is lacking any serious information on how "persistent" these cracks are and at what point in the flight they are believed to occur. This could simply be an issue with reuse, with the cracks occurring due to reentry stresses. Also the Falcon 9 is also DESIGNED to survive catastrophic engine failures, and has done so on at least one flight. That's not to say that this issue shouldn't be fixed, but without more information it seems a pretty big leap to say that this is a showstopper for manned flights.
What America needed to go along with it's very expensive Atlas V, was a cheap, and less reliable rocket. In the 90s, someone in NASA called for cheap rockets, which would blow up 1 out of every 3 launches. SpaceX has answered the call. Sure, their failure rate is more like 1 out of every 10 launches, but that is good enough for me. When it comes to sending payload to the iss, or cheap, mass produced satellites into orbit, SpaceX is the low cost company you can pay less for.
So yes, every corner cut, every dissatisfied employee, and every explosion, makes me glad that SpaceX, and its flimsy rockets exist. I'd never let SpaceX handle astronauts though.
I'm sorry, did you just suggest that we build our critical Defense infrastructure on components sourced from Soviet Russia?!!
That's insane.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The blades crack DURING the first launch.
Yes. If only they did some kind of testing with those rocket engines so they could evaluate their performance before they launched them.....like maybe put them on a test stand and run them and then take them apart to see how they did.
While he's looking for that paper faggot, he can help his friend Jack off his horse.
Other way around, if they want to lose tons of money they can target 100% reliability. If you want to make a lot of money, they need to find the right balance of cost versus reliability.
Yes. If only they did some kind of testing with those rocket engines so they could evaluate their performance before they launched them.....like maybe put them on a test stand and run them and then take them apart to see how they did.
Very worthwhile testing no doubt but still a pale substitute for actually launching & retrieving them
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The Antares uses these which were left over from the Soviet Union:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Take a look at the section on "design" here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In regard to cracks caused by the pressure and heat of the fuel when ignited, or of the turbineblades which pump the fuel, etc., it gives an exact representation, not a 'pale substitute'. There are some form of stresses that are less accurate when measured on ground-tests, but most of it provides excellent proof of reliability (or lack thereof) at the same level as if the rocket *were* retrieved afterwards.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
From TFA [I know, I know]:
> Besides this particular problem, the investigators cite Falcon 9's frequent modifications for the delay.
"But hey, this is agile development. Turbine blades are in the next sprint!"
Dunno why it hasn't been said, but SpaceX did not design the turbopump in their engines.
There is an easy solution to this. Do what NASA did for the Shuttle engines and redefine cracks in the turbines to be a maintenance problem instead of a flight safety problem.