Could SpaceX Rocket Technology Put Lives At Risk? (chicagotribune.com)

In preparation for a crewed mission into orbit, NASA safety advisers are warning that the super-cold propellant SpaceX uses in their Falcon 9 rockets could be "a potential safety risk." When SpaceX is about to launch a rocket, they load it up with propellant at super-cold temperatures to shrink its size, allowing them to pack more of it into the tanks. "At those extreme temperatures, the propellant would need to be loaded just before takeoff -- while astronauts are aboard," reports Chicago Tribune. "An accident, or a spark, during this maneuver, known as 'load-and-go,' could set off an explosion." From the report: One watchdog group labeled load-and-go a "potential safety risk." A NASA advisory group warned in a letter that the method was "contrary to booster safety criteria that has been in place for over 50 years." The fueling issue is emerging as a point of tension between the safety-obsessed space agency and the maverick company run by Musk, a tech entrepreneur who is well known for his flair for the dramatic and for pushing boundaries of rocket science. The concerns from some at NASA are shared by others. John Mulholland, who oversees Boeing's contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station and once worked on the space shuttle, said load-and-go fueling was rejected by NASA in the past because "we never could get comfortable with the safety risks that you would take with that approach. When you're loading densified propellants, it is not an inherently stable situation."

Greg Autry, a business professor at the University of Southern California, said the load-and-go procedures were a heated issue when he served on Trump's NASA transition team. "NASA is supposed to be a risk-taking organization," he said. "But every time we would mention accepting risk in human spaceflight, the NASA people would say, 'But, oh, you have to remember the scar tissue' -- and they were talking about the two shuttle disasters. They seemed to have become victims of the past and unwilling to try anything new, because of that scar tissue."

Comments

Yes and no

[religionofpeas]

There's always a risk that you're going to blow up if you climb in a rocket. If you don't want to accept that risk, don't climb in there.

Also, there has only been one case where a SpaceX rocket exploded during propellant loading, and timing analysis shows that a manned capsule would have been able to activate the emergency abort sequence, and escape the fireball.

https://gfycat.com/TenseClever...

Re:Yes and no

[arglebargle_xiv]

Also, NASA used cryogenic propellants for many manned missions. Pot, kettle, black.

Re:Yes and no

[nojayuk]

Also, NASA used cryogenic propellants for many manned missions.

Cryogenic fuel and oxidiser loading was complete before the astronauts entered the capsule or the Shuttle. Some extra LH2 and LOX was added as a top-up process during the rest of the countdown due to losses from warming.

SpaceX's ultra-cold higher-density LOX has to be loaded almost immediately before launch as it will warm up and expand and negate the advantage of its increased density if it's left too long in the rocket's tank. That requires astronauts on a man-rated Falcon 9 using higher-density LOX to be on board the capsule when the oxygen tank starts being filled. This is an extra risk over and above all the other risks of flying the cheapest bidder's hardware.

Re:Yes and no

[Rei]

I actually disagree.

If you're in the capsule, and there's an explosion, the launch escape system fires and you're safe.
If you're outside the capsule (or getting into it, but not yet to the point that you're strapped in and the abort system has been activated), and there's an explosion, you're dead.

The question is: are the odds of an explosion with the rocket pre-fueled, during the crew loading time, less than the odds of the crew escape system working? If no, then the SpaceX approach is safer. If yes, then SpaceX needs to fix their bloody crew escape system.

Re:Yes and no

[vtcodger]

"There's always a risk that you're going to blow up if you climb in a rocket."

Of course. What's at issue is how great the risk is. Keep in mind that 133 of 135 Space Shuttle missions didn't kill anyone, but that the resulting 1.5% failure rate was generally felt to be unacceptable. It's a little hard to compute a failure rate for Falcon 9. Officially it's around 4% (two failures in 54 launches). But that doesn't count the vehicle that blew up on the launch pad in 2016 during static testing. OTOH, early lifetime failures for a new technology are probably more common than failures after the technology matures.

My gut feeling. Falcon 9 is fine for unmanned launches. For manned launches, it's maybe a bit iffy but it may get better over time.

Re:Yes and no

[vtcodger]

Let's try a Muskian solution. We'll just bring the entire payload -- astronauts and all -- in via hyperloop and fire them into the air next to the rocket as the rocket lifts off. The payload will dynamically attach itself to the launch vehicle somewhere around 100 meters into the flight using giant magnets or a vacuum or something. Or maybe they'll just snare the lifting rocket using a giant net.

Re: Yes and no

[bobbied]

Well.. Let's be fair about NASA's safety records...

NASA has demonstrated two things in their history. 1. They can be blind to obvious risks and become complacent about safety when what they are doing becomes too routine. 2. They can, and have, put excellent safety standards and practices in place and operate in very dangerous environments using very dangerous equipment in reasonably safe ways.

NASA has demonstrated both sides of the safety problem. They have made colossal mistakes, killed or nearly killed many people for stupid reasons AND they have learned from their mistakes, instituted safety practices that have allowed them to do amazing things with extremely few serious accidents and loss of life. They've made the stupid mistakes, and the hard decisions, in turn, and learned from the mistakes when they fell into complacency.

So, I think NASA is unique in it's qualifications for reviewing and determining space system's safety and their opinion carries a lot of weight. I also think that they are fallible as any other large organization, and they have a history of ignoring their risk management lessons learned in the name of expediency and efficiency.

So the question here is about SpaceX verses NASA in a discussion of risk management. I'm not sure we can dismiss either's opinions on the question. That means, we will need more information to decide. It may cost a lot of money to obtain the necessary information, it may take time and effort. I understand SpaceX is very sensitive to cost and schedule, but those pressures are what drove NASA into their various stupid mistakes. So I think NASA needs to be satisfied and SpaceX needs to prove what it needs to prove or change it's design.

Re: Yes and no

[arglebargle_xiv]

And that's safer? You're sitting on top of a fully-fuelled, giant flying bomb waiting to see if the launch will get scrubbed yet again (STS-61, STS-73). From memory one of the aborts for -61 was due to them losing a huge quantity of LOX with the crew on board, which doesn't make a strong case for fuel first, crew later.

Ban it now

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to embrace a full risk aversion policy. Dangers of any kind have no place in a civilized society. No debate. Make me safe. #saynotorisk #sayyestolife #norisks #nodebate #safetynow

The Law of the Land, and NASA's Mission

[Zobeid]

Safety is NASA's top priority. That's not even their decision. A requirement that safety be NASA's top priority was passed through the Congress and signed by the President, and it's the law of the land. If they really take that law literally and fully comply with it, then the solution is to never fly. Astronauts are safest on the ground.

Besides, flying astronauts into space doesn't really advance the mission of our manned spaceflight program. If we *really* want to funnel federal money into established aerospace contractors and the right congressional districts, then the optimum way to do that is to endlessly develop spacecraft and never fly them.

shuttle cock(up)s

[harvey the nerd]

In the NASA scar tissue, there were known problems that NASA mgmt refused to honestly address before launches. In 1986, Challenger's freezeable, frozen seals. On Columbia, falling ice hits were a recurrent source of significant shuttle damage, that they specifically suspected a major hit on the fatal flight. Ice build up is an old problem with several solutions. Finally, NASA had a chance to image the fatal hole on Columbia in space, and didn't....

Too f'g many critical management failures...

Re:shuttle cock(up)s

[RKThoadan]

Ars has a great write up on it and an actual shuttle engineer added some information in the comments. The most obvious issue is that there was no way to prevent what happened to Columbia from happening to Atlantis (which was in the VAB at the time) and losing 2 shuttles. Link: https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

Do you know what else is a safety risk? Rockets...

[e0b521bb9d0246d0b619]

Manned rocketry involves attaching humans to what is essentially a controlled explosion. There is always going to be a risk in this, regardless of when you trigger that explosion.

Walking across the street is a risk.

[techmage]

Everything is a risk. Rockets extremely so. Why is it that thousands can die in car accidents every year and that is considered acceptable but oh, change the way we do things on a rocket and that extra risk keeps the flight grounded? I understand the risks is rocketry. Things can go south real fast. You need to mitigate the risks, not try to eliminate or ignore them. Every time you launch, you risk losing the payload or the crew. What that percentage is you only find out after you fly a number of times (the more you fly the more you know). SpaceX has launched over 20 times with densified fuel. The SLS has flown zero times. I think SpaceX is in the lead on this risk situation.

Known risk vs unnecessary risk

[sjbe]

There's always a risk that you're going to blow up if you climb in a rocket. If you don't want to accept that risk, don't climb in there.

There is a difference between accepting a known risk and accepting an unnecessary risk.

Also, there has only been one case where a SpaceX rocket exploded during propellant loading

One case is more than enough to warrant caution. SpaceX has had approximately 50 launches so far. That's an approximately 2% failure rate which is alarmingly high. Two shuttles were lost at that rate of failure. I'm all for pushing the envelope but that doesn't mean we should say "hold my beer" and ignore known risks that could be mitigated.

Boeing involvement

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Does anyone else find it convenient the guy most closely associated with Boeing -- you know, that company with the multibillion-dollar vaporware SLS rocket contract -- is squawking the loudest about this?

Nah, no conflict of interest here. Move along folks.

Solving a known failure mode

[sjbe]

Demanding as close to zero risk as possible in spaceflight missions is good for the few humans aboard, but slows development of the field for the rest of mankind.

There is a difference between accepting a known risk and accepting an unnecessary risk. In this case there has been a concern raised based on a previous rocket exploding under similar conditions. It's not unreasonable to insist that we solve or mitigate a known failure mode prior to putting people on board the rocket. It's not to say SpaceX cannot use this procedure but rather that they will have to do some work to prove that is reasonably safe compared to known proven methods.

It's why I've always assumed a nation such as China would lead the space revolution.

Should that happen it will be because China had the political will to invest heavily in their space program whereas we did not. China doesn't want to blow up their people any more than we do. But failure modes can be solved with adequate investment. Countries that lack the political will to make space exploration a priority will inevitably take a back seat to those countries that do.

The same NASA that used the shuttle boosters?

[Opportunist]

You know, the solid-fuel booster rockets on the shuttle that cannot be shut down once started? That's the NASA that is now so concerned over security problems?

Von Braun, back in the 60s, already knew that you cannot really man-rate those things exactly because you have zero control over them once they went off. And they now have a problem with "security concerns"?

I smell a government agency having a problem with seeing their last reason to exist vanish.

Irresponsible

[sjbe]

If you're in the capsule, and there's an explosion, the launch escape system fires and you're safe.

That's like saying that we shouldn't worry about safe refueling procedures on an F15 because it has an ejection seat. That's incredibly irresponsible and almost weapons grade stupid. Emergency escape systems are nice to have but not something you want to depend on since they are almost as dangerous as the problems they protect against. Furthermore explosions can happen MUCH faster than any escape system could carry the crew to safety. Ejection systems only help with failure modes where you have some amount of time to react. Rockets are fast but not instantaneous.

The question is: are the odds of an explosion with the rocket pre-fueled, during the crew loading time, less than the odds of the crew escape system working?

You don't work in risk management do you? That is NOT the correct analysis. If you actually are relying on the escape system rather than designing a safe refueling procedure then you have a poorly designed rocket and incompetent engineers. You use escape systems for to mitigate risks that cannot be further mitigated which isn't the case here. If SpaceX is using unsafe fueling procedures then you redesign the fueling procedures until they are safe. This might involve blowing up a few more (hopefully unmanned) rockts first. You do not say "YOLO" and hope the escape system will protect your ass from incompetent engineering.

Re:Irresponsible

[Rei]

That's like saying that we shouldn't worry about safe refueling procedures on an F-15 because it has an ejection seat.

Does anyone worry about an F-15 exploding during fueling? No? Then your example doesn't work. People stand right next to F-15s while they're fueling, and they're also fueled midair.

Indeed, the whole point is to get the vehicles to the point that nobody worries about them exploding.

That's incredibly irresponsible and almost weapons grade stupid. Emergency escape systems are nice to have but not something you want to depend on

Exactly. They're for emergencies only. Are you telling me than an explosion isn't an emergency? No, they're not comfortable, but they save lives.

What's your "emergency escape" for people standing outside a rocket or not yet strapped in when it explodes? None, that's what. They're dead.

Furthermore explosions can happen MUCH faster than any escape system could carry the crew to safety.

No. And indeed, if that were the case, it wouldn't be an emergency escape, and wouldn't be approved.

If you actually are relying on the escape system rather than designing a safe refueling procedure then you have a poorly designed rocket and incompetent engineers.

Every system has a probability of failure. Period. The chance of a refueling failure will never be zero. Nor will the chance of a pre-fueled rocket exploding on the pad during crew failure. A proper analysis of failures has one metric: crew safety probabilities. And safety systems are very specifically a part of that. You cannot just discount the risk of people being killed during crew loading like you wish to. One obviously want the fuel loading risk to be as low as possible when crew is pre-loaded, just like one obviously wants the crew loading risk to be as low as possible when they're not. That doesn't mean you can just pretend that the former has all the risk and the latter has none, or that the availability vs. lack of emergency safety systems is irrelevant.

Re:Musk Doesn't Care About Risks

[pezpunk]

your pathetic salty jealousy is hilarious.

Re:Musk Doesn't Care About Risks

[jellomizer]

Why shouldn't we be jealous. Who wouldn't want to be the leader of Mars?
Global Warming would be a good thing!
Labor dependent on your resources, they cannot quit, or afford to be unproductive.
causing 0% unemployment, and 0% homelessness.
History will mark you as the first leader of Mars.
if Earth gets destroyed then you become the leader of the human species.

NASA "Advisors"

[bradley13]

Low temperature fuel. Like the LoX and liquid hydrogen used by the Space Shuttle? This complaint doesn't even make sense.

A quick read through TFA, and the second linked article: it's not NASA saying this, it is some unknown group of NASA "advisors". The only person specifically named worked for Boeing. Which is to say that SpaceX's competitors are concerned. The fact that NASA has allowed those competitors to speak to the press as "NASA advisors" just shows the level of corporate cronyism present in the game. And, yes, NASA could stop them - if they were really serious, it would be "contact the press and demand a retraction, or contract xyz is cancelled".

ULA has got to be seriously scared. As in "need a change of underwear" scared. It's all well and good to suck up overpriced contracts, as long as any competition is held at bay with overregulation. However, when a competitor not only jumps the regulatory hurdles, but is 1/10 the price, _and_ has an actual product, as opposed to vaporware... Well, there comes a point where the cronyism is seriously endangered.

ULA will get nasty before they give up - this is just the warm-up. I hope SpaceX has good lawyers, and also a really good security force. I expect all sorts of staged lawsuits - maybe some class actions if they can find an excuse. Meanwhile, a well-placed bullet hole in the fuel tank of a launching rocket might dent that safety record.

Evaluating safety

[sjbe]

While most people are not qualified to judge rocket safety risks, there is only one entity that has actually *demonstrated* that they are incompetent at judging rocket safety risks, and for that matter they did so spectacularly and totally, and then managed to stay in a position to continue judging rocket safety anyway and then did so again! That would of course be NASA

Eyeroll... If NASA isn't qualified to evaluate risks then nobody is. That's one of the dumbest arguments I've read in a long time. Yes NASA has made mistakes in the past. Good luck finding any organization that has not. Literally every space agency and private company building rockets has blown up rockets. SpaceX certainly has no track record to suggest they are better at evaluating risk than NASA is.

It's still a hell of a lot safer than the deathtrap shuttle was.

What is safer? A non-operational manned launch system? Pretty easy to have a perfect safety record when you don't launch anything. And by all means ignore the fact that SpaceX has a record of blowing up rockets at a rate pretty similar to the rate we lost space shuttles.

Re:Evaluating safety

[Gavagai80]

We only ever lost two space shuttles. The number or rockets SpaceX has lost is....a lot.

The number of Falcon 9s lost is also two, and one of those was lost in a static fire test that would never have had people on board. Not sure what universe you're living in.

Of course, the Columbia disaster wasn't an exploding rocket either. That disaster would have to be compared with a Dragon heat shield failure, which hasn't happened yet.

The shuttle boosters did have a better non-explosion rate than SpaceX, 134/135 compared to SpaceX's 52 out of 53 or 54 (depending whether you include a static fire test, which would be equivalent to a space shuttle exploding during testing with nobody aboard, which never happened probably because you couldn't do static test fires of a space shuttle). But your "a lot" of explosions are imaginary unless you're talking about initial Falcon 1 tests, which case you should be comparing with NASAs early test rockets which were famed for exploding frequently.

Reading comprehension failure

[sjbe]

I fail to see any difference between "load it up with propellant at super-cold temperatures to shrink its size" and "load it up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen"

You fail because you cannot be bothered to actually read beyond the headline. The problem isn't THAT they are using cold propellant. The problem is WHEN they are loading the propellant. Handling fuel carries a non-zero chance of catastrophic failure. Fuel that is already on board has already been handled safely and is therefore safer to the astronauts. It's not clear if loading fuel after the astronauts are already on board presents an unacceptable increase in risk. It might or it might not. Historically the rockets have been loaded with fuel and then the astronauts board. SpaceX is proposing to change this.

Re:It has to be proven better

[religionofpeas]

To argue that astronauts should just shut up and strap in without appropriate investigation of the risks they are taking is a dumb way to run a space program

That's why nobody is doing that. Teams from SpaceX, NASA, FAA, and USAF, have been working for months trying to understand the details of the explosion. As a result, they've modified their fuel loading procedure, and proposed longer term updates to their oxygen tank design.

If it isn't then that's unfortunate but they'll have to figure something else out

Or NASA finds another rocket to take their astronauts. Or we just keep them on the ground.

The alternative is more dangerous

[HangingChad]

The alternative to load and go is transporting the flight crew and personnel to the top of a rocket that's already fully fueled. Essentially personnel are working in areas with minimal protection and no ejection system standing next to a 230 foot tall bomb.

The way SpaceX does load and go, the flight crew is in a capsule with a functional abort system and the support personnel are a safe distance away.

Where would you rather be if there was an accident? In a crew capsule with an abort system or an elevator in the gantry? It's not rocket science...well, kinda is...but that's beside the point.

This smells like a hit piece

[Mysticalfruit]

Yes, there are valid concerns regarding densified propellants. Can those be mitigated, to a degree. SpaceX has now multiple years of handling densified propellants... However, just stating that they've done it a certain way because, well they've done it a certain way.

Let's think this out.

Scenario 1. Vehicle is dry. Astronauts and Techs ride up the elevator and get Astronauts situated the vehicle. Technicians then leave the pad. Abort system is verified and enabled. Propellant loading begins.

Scenario 2. Vehicle is loaded and oxidizer boil off is occuring, which means the Astronauts and support staff will be riding up an elevator next to a loaded rocket, plus the strong back will have be supplementing the vehicle so it's going to have a substantial amount of cryogenically cooled oxygen in it as well. Now, once the crew is loaded, the technicians need to safely get down the elevator and away while boil off and supplemental loading is occuring

Which of these scenarios seem more likely to be a recipe for disaster?

I called this a hit piece because this is looks from the outside like SpaceX is being forced to jump over much higher hurdles than ULA.

Re:You're Closer Than You Think

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Actually, they're largely enabled by sane engineering design decisions, such as not manufacturing multiple kinds of tanks (diameter, material, etc.) for a single vehicle, not manufacturing multiple vastly different kinds of engines, and so on.

Re:It has to be proven better

[prisoner-of-enigma]

That's not adequate justification for throwing caution to the wind.

You realize you're backing the same agency that decided to fly the very first Shuttle mission as a manned mission without a full-up unmanned test beforehand. That had never been done in all of NASA's history. You're also backing the agency that decided to fly manned missions with strap-on solid rocket boosters, something also not done in any of NASA's history since they cannot be throttled and there is no survivable abort mode while they're firing. You're also backing the agency that allowed a heat shield specified to not be impacted by debris and then stuck it on the side of a giant cryogenic fuel tank guaranteed to cause ice debris (indeed, debris damage to the heat tiles was consistently noted and ignored from the very first mission). You're also backing an agency that specifically designed a Shuttle that has no reasonably-survivable abort modes other than Abort-to-Orbit (ATO) and no survivable aborts if anything goes wrong during re-entry or landing.

When compared to that, SpaceX looks downright hypercautious.

To be fair to NASA

[MrKaos]

IIRC, the US Nuclear sub command criticized NASA in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report for claiming who else operates high performance machinery in hostile conditions?.

They replied We do, we operate Nuclear Submarines and put five thousand people to work studying the Challenger accident to see what we could learn, how many did you put on it?

I personally don't think it's fair to blame NASA for being safety conscious after blaming them for not being safety conscious.

Manned flight protocol

[Immerman]

Easy solution: pre-load a lower amount of fuel on manned flights.

The F9 has payload capacity to burn, the last-minute fueling boosts that even further. You want more safety, load the fuel beforehand, and accept the resulting lower capacity, which should still be more than enough to transport a few passengers to orbit.

Re:It has to be proven better

[Thelasko]

As a result, they've modified their fuel loading procedure, and proposed longer term updates to their oxygen tank design.

The proposed changes are complete. Falcon 9 Block 5 has many changes to improve reliability and safety. Updates to the oxygen/helium tanks are just one of many.

Keep in mind, SpaceX has a major advantage in safety and reliability that others don't have. They have recovered their boosters in tact. I'm sure they have torn them down to do detailed analysis on how the components hold up in flight. No other launch provider can do that.

Re: This is an Engineering Problem

[oobayly]

What H1B holders work in SpaceX? ITAR requires that anyone who works on launch systems (due to the similarity to ICBM systems) to be a US citizen or green card holder.

Re:This is an Engineering Problem

[kellymcdonald78]

Except that only US citizens can work at SpaceX due to ITAR restrictions (unless you go through an incredibly extensive waiver process)