1 - SpaceX is a startup company. They run on venture capital, and unlike NASA who gets a big bag of taxpayer money, SpaceX has to promise new investors something better every year. And since SpaceX hasn’t come close to turning a profit, they need to do it by making spectacle. Launching Rockets is spectacle. Traditional companies can take their time to get it right, but SpaceX can’t draw in the venture capital they need to survive based on one succesful launch every other year. But they can get money with slightly less shitty failures.
2 - SpaceX is using an entirely new type of engines, burning liquid methane instead of kerosine or hydrogen, and making rocket engines is… well… rocket science. The problem is mostly that it’s really really hard to get engines to relight when you don’t have gravity, and especially hard when it’s methane you’re burning. This is why Apollo used hypergolic engines (fuel that will burn when it touches, instead of needing to be lit) for everyone but the main launch.
3 - SpaceX only got the contract for the lunar lander because the head of the lunar lander program, Kathy Lueders, gave them (and not the other parties) a private call to tell them the exact budget available. Then she awarded the contract to SpaceX, for being the only party to submit a bid within the budget. (Source: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2021cv1695-77-0 the court opinion where they spell out this was legal, and say nothing on wisdom or ethics, pdf alert). Incidentally she now has a cushy and well-paid job at SpaceX.
4 - NASA recently paid a second party, blue Origin, to also develop a lunar lander, so feel free to take that as you will. It’s probably not a sign of trust in SpaceX… so I’m willing to say that point 5 is that either SpaceX is shit at this (unlikely, since Falcon 9 is pretty awesome) or they’re just not taking it seriously.
Point 1: SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development. With the Falcon 9, that process proved wildly efficient and successful, culminating in a launch vehicle so reliable that it’s cheaper to insure a payload on an F9 that already has multiple launches under its belt than a brand new booster. And they’re turning enough of a profit to develop the Starship largely on internal funds, seeing how the early Raptor flight tests were before the HLS contract.
Point 2: Just adding, the Raptor engine is the first full-flow staged combustion engine to ever get off a testing stand and actually fly. The engineering complexity of these things is on the level of the Shuttle’s RS-25.
Point 3: SpaceX were the only ones with more than designs and mockups to present, and they had a reliable track history from working with NASA on the commercial resupply and crew projects. And I see no problem with awarding a contract to a bid that actually fits into the budget.
Point 4: Multiple options was always part of the plan. NASA wants redundancy, so that if one of the providers runs into problems, the other provider can continue (and perhaps even take up the slack) instead of everything coming to a grinding halt. For a perfect example, look at the Shuttle and Commercial Crew programs. The Shuttle got grounded and since it was NASA’s only manned launcher, they had to bum rides from the russians. In contrast, the CC contract was awarded to Boeing and SpaceX. With Starliner’s continued issues, SpaceX has picked up the slack and fulfilled more than their initial contract in launches, instead of NASA having to bum rides from the russians again. The initial HLS contract was supposed to go to two providers, until the budget got cut. Blue’s bid was always the favorite for the second pick.
SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development.
This is a catchy statement, not an actionable philosophy. There’s many ways to do it, and it’s entirely possible that SpaceX is doing it poorly.
There’s a lot of value in brainstorming every imaginable failure scenario. It’s industry standard to do so in fact with HAZOPs. There’s failures that you may not necessarily see in testing – especially those that are rare but catastrophic. This is a field that should be acutely aware of that given past events.
There’s also a right way to do testing and a wrong way to do testing. You typically consolidate tests and do several at a time, depending on the stage in the project. And you don’t typically risk precious equipment in doing so.
From the sounds of it, they don’t have a robust safety program, and they’re hemorrhaging money and resources through poor testing philosophies.
Several reasons.
1 - SpaceX is a startup company. They run on venture capital, and unlike NASA who gets a big bag of taxpayer money, SpaceX has to promise new investors something better every year. And since SpaceX hasn’t come close to turning a profit, they need to do it by making spectacle. Launching Rockets is spectacle. Traditional companies can take their time to get it right, but SpaceX can’t draw in the venture capital they need to survive based on one succesful launch every other year. But they can get money with slightly less shitty failures.
2 - SpaceX is using an entirely new type of engines, burning liquid methane instead of kerosine or hydrogen, and making rocket engines is… well… rocket science. The problem is mostly that it’s really really hard to get engines to relight when you don’t have gravity, and especially hard when it’s methane you’re burning. This is why Apollo used hypergolic engines (fuel that will burn when it touches, instead of needing to be lit) for everyone but the main launch.
3 - SpaceX only got the contract for the lunar lander because the head of the lunar lander program, Kathy Lueders, gave them (and not the other parties) a private call to tell them the exact budget available. Then she awarded the contract to SpaceX, for being the only party to submit a bid within the budget. (Source: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2021cv1695-77-0 the court opinion where they spell out this was legal, and say nothing on wisdom or ethics, pdf alert). Incidentally she now has a cushy and well-paid job at SpaceX.
4 - NASA recently paid a second party, blue Origin, to also develop a lunar lander, so feel free to take that as you will. It’s probably not a sign of trust in SpaceX… so I’m willing to say that point 5 is that either SpaceX is shit at this (unlikely, since Falcon 9 is pretty awesome) or they’re just not taking it seriously.
Point 1: SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development. With the Falcon 9, that process proved wildly efficient and successful, culminating in a launch vehicle so reliable that it’s cheaper to insure a payload on an F9 that already has multiple launches under its belt than a brand new booster. And they’re turning enough of a profit to develop the Starship largely on internal funds, seeing how the early Raptor flight tests were before the HLS contract.
Point 2: Just adding, the Raptor engine is the first full-flow staged combustion engine to ever get off a testing stand and actually fly. The engineering complexity of these things is on the level of the Shuttle’s RS-25.
Point 3: SpaceX were the only ones with more than designs and mockups to present, and they had a reliable track history from working with NASA on the commercial resupply and crew projects. And I see no problem with awarding a contract to a bid that actually fits into the budget.
Point 4: Multiple options was always part of the plan. NASA wants redundancy, so that if one of the providers runs into problems, the other provider can continue (and perhaps even take up the slack) instead of everything coming to a grinding halt. For a perfect example, look at the Shuttle and Commercial Crew programs. The Shuttle got grounded and since it was NASA’s only manned launcher, they had to bum rides from the russians. In contrast, the CC contract was awarded to Boeing and SpaceX. With Starliner’s continued issues, SpaceX has picked up the slack and fulfilled more than their initial contract in launches, instead of NASA having to bum rides from the russians again. The initial HLS contract was supposed to go to two providers, until the budget got cut. Blue’s bid was always the favorite for the second pick.
This is a catchy statement, not an actionable philosophy. There’s many ways to do it, and it’s entirely possible that SpaceX is doing it poorly.
There’s a lot of value in brainstorming every imaginable failure scenario. It’s industry standard to do so in fact with HAZOPs. There’s failures that you may not necessarily see in testing – especially those that are rare but catastrophic. This is a field that should be acutely aware of that given past events.
There’s also a right way to do testing and a wrong way to do testing. You typically consolidate tests and do several at a time, depending on the stage in the project. And you don’t typically risk precious equipment in doing so.
From the sounds of it, they don’t have a robust safety program, and they’re hemorrhaging money and resources through poor testing philosophies.