NASA Needs A Decade To Figure Out Launch Failures
NASA Investigation Uncovers Cause of Two Science Mission Launch Failures
“NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) investigators have determined the technical root cause for the Taurus XL launch failures of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) and Glory missions in 2009 and 2011, respectively: faulty materials provided by aluminum manufacturer, Sapa Profiles, Inc. (SPI). LSP’s technical investigation led to the involvement of NASA’s Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). DOJ’s efforts, recently made public, resulted in the resolution of criminal charges and alleged civil claims against SPI, and its agreement to pay $46 million to the U.S. government and other commercial customers. This relates to a 19-year scheme that included falsifying thousands of certifications for aluminum extrusions to hundreds of customers. NASA’s updated public summary of the launch failures, which was published Tuesday …”
NASA Investigative Summary: Taurus XL T8 and T9 Mission Failures
“The combined cost of both mission failures was in excess of $700,000,000.”
Keith’s note: It took NASA KSC, NASA OIG, and DOJ nearly a decade to figure out what went wrong – on missions worth $700,000,000 – and all that the responsible company has to pay is $46 million – 5% of the loss to taxpayers that they caused – after deliberately and systematically engaging in a “19 year scheme”. Really?
But I least they did found out…
They found out what the problem was some time ago. To quote the article, “The exclusion from government contracting has been in effect since Sept. 30, 2015.” I seem to remember this being discussed on NASA Watch back then. The NASA investigation in to the launch failures then brought in the Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Justice. The news is that the Department of Justice has just released the results of its investigation and the fact that the company will be paying the government $46 million. Which, if you ask me, is getting off easy, since the spacecraft were worth over ten times that much _and_ those launch vehicles weren’t the only things using that substandard aluminum.
The US does not posses a justice system. We have a legal system, one that can be manipulated into near timelessness.
And the Napoleonic code and earlier French systems are closer to a justice system. But I have mixed feelings about them. Our legal system is designed to prevent innocent people from being convicted, even if the same rules prevent the punishment of people who really are guilty. That isn’t great, but I don’t think I’d like the alternatives.
They may be a critical supplier and a bigger fine might put them out of business. The ripple effect might have been huge. Fair or not, if you have leverage, you have leverage.
Well, that seems like a good argument against having critical suppliers and sole source contracts.
It didn’t take this long to find out. It took this long to resolve the investigation and prosecution. Consider both the magnitude of the damages and the scope of the fraud it doesn’t seem completely out of line.
Yeah, once this became a criminal case, everything would have started moving much more slowly than a normal post-accident investigation. It was no longer just an engineering question about what went wrong, but a judicial question of who was to blame for which particular acts.
That takes time, both because of the added complexity and because the subject of the investigation is no longer a willing participant, and will actively block you any chance they get.
Didn’t we hear all about this a few years ago? What made it reach national news today?
Time for NASA to retire. Private entrepreneurial efforts in any business will not tolerate such waste.
NASA contracted these two launches from a private company, Orbital Sciences (now owned by Northrop-Grumman). OSC got royally um… ripped-off by Norsk Hydro Aluminum. I’m not sure how any of this adds up to “NASA should retire” in your mind.
Agree with your observation. However, leadership in any organization dedicated to the proposition of work excellence will not let this happen, and customer oversight will keep the supplier honest. Both sides too lazy to do the right thing, every time. Both need to be disbanded, and not allowed to participate in this activity, ever again. Perpetrators bright to justice, and fined and/or jailed. Very simple and effective equation. I’m fine with the harshness implicated in my suggestions. I can live by the same standard. Time to enforce the same standards and practices WITHOUT REMORSE. The country will be better for doing so.
Regarding Keith’s note, while I agree that it is frustrating that we lost $700M in satellites it is unreasonable that the company would be held accountable for the whole cost. I would bet the frangible bolts that were provided only amounted to a couple million dollars (or maybe even less) so the $46M penalty is probably significant.
Did Morton Thiokol reimburse the government $1B+ for blowing up Challenger? Were they penalized anything? And I know the failure was due to weather but the investigation found that there were other cases of blow past the O-rings.
In the case of Challenger, Thiokol built the boosters to a NASA-approved design, and NASA people were at the table when conditions for safe and unsafe flight were discussed. In the case of the OCO and Glory launches, SPI was manufacturing a faulty product, which did not meet the NASA-specified standards, an employee was deliberately falsifying the certification documents, and this had been going on for a decade, either without the company noticing or without them doing anything about it. That puts it in a whole different world in terms of liability. But the company could claim they didn’t know, admit they should have realized the certifications were too good to be true, and only pay a modest fine. If so, I hope they didn’t go easy on the employee who faked the certifications.