SpaceX FRR And Friendly Ghosts From Apollo (Update)

1. The right way forward is to learn the lessons from the past, but not be constrained to use the same solutions. In space, we have not yet found the way to reward organizations that do that. It requires not just asking “what did they do”, but “why did they do it that way”, looking at the failures and the near-misses, and asking yourself not just “can we fail the same way”, but “can we fail in the same KIND of way”.

   These are the kinds of things which a competitive industry tends to work out ways to do. We are not there yet.

   We have organizations which think “learn the lessons of the past” means “do the same things the same way” (in spite of changed technology, changed constraints, and changed missions with changed requirements), and organizations that seem to think nothing done before ~2000 AD has any relevance. The safety culture right now isn’t especially healthy in *either* the government *or* the industry side.

   1. Does SX show some of the qualities that you (correctly) describe? The shift to steel is a very recent example among countless others.

      Operationally, the aircraft industry, too, shows evidence of learning from mistakes, particularly post-Tenerife, after which the industry as actively eschewed the idea that Captain and King are synonymous, simultaneously encouraging other cockpit professionals to ask questions (and aided by the CVR). Clinical medicine, as well as hospitals, have similarly evolved ways to learn from the worst errors in judgement or simple mistakes while dodging a very dicey legal environment.

      (The case of nurse Charlie Cullen is perhaps the Tenerife of medicine, having murdered some 400 hospital patients before his 2003 arrest; sweeping changes followed: “The Good Nurse,” Graeber.)

2. So it’s been a good 24 hours for space. For the first time in 46 years an American rocket launched a payload to the Moon’s surface. The booster was recovered intact and will be used for the Dragon2 in flight abort test. Spaceship2 took 3 Americans to space. And NASA finally decides it’s OK to light the candle for the Dragon2 test flight. A good day’s work ?

   1. To be fair, an American rocket launched a payload into a super-synchronous transfer orbit. The Beresheet ground support team will design & execute maneuvers to target its lunar encounter and capture.

      1. Yes the launch profile may not have been that unusual, but an American rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with the end result (assuming success) of a payload on the Moon and that hasn’t happened for a long time. We’ll take what we can get for now.

3. Did everyone have those war surplus desks? We also had these four-spoked roller chairs they eventually got rid of because it was too easy to lean back and split your head (went right into a wall once).

   1. I worked at several desks and some were there from when they made P-51s in the same building in WWII. I found a gas ration coupon booklet with all the tickets torn out in one desk.

   2. I found many cool reminders of the past at several different jobs. I was fascinated with the old documents and other things we found in those old steel desks. We held a contest one year at Honeywell Clearwater for the oldest document. The best we came up with was from 1963, over 20yrs old back then.

      I suspect there are many hidden treasures in the old office space up in the VAB at KSC. You walk into some of those areas and it looked like the occupants just stopped showing up one day; jackets still hanging up, papers on desks. Kind of creepy.
      Thanks for sharing Keith.

      1. I thought VAB offices became problematic due to the use of SRBs for the space shuttle? Maybe my fuzzy memory here is completely wrong though. I never personally worked in the program, so YMMV.

         1. That is correct, the offices were abandoned at the end of the Apollo program. That’s how long that stuff had sat there.

   3. I did! from 1985 to late 1990s, two kinds: gray and bluck green. Those things are indestructible. In event of earthquake, climb under one of those and it will withstand a direct hit from a steel beam.

4. Quite frankly, I don’t think NASA or Gerst have any wisdom to offer any longer. At least so far none of them have ever designed, developed or built anything. That is something Space-X has done; the current NASA ‘leaders’, by comparison, have zero experience in spacecraft DDT&E. Maybe in a few years they will have done enough on Orion to show they can still do something, but at the rate Orion has been going, it may never fly. Really, there is no need for it except for Congressional will.

   1. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you are going to troll people anonymously and post idiotic mass character assassinations then you will be banned. Got that?

   2. You could not be more wrong. There have been many meetings where the rank and file have tried to innovate. Yes there have been some career bureaucrats who have gamed the system. There are also many who have pushed the limits of what the “political will” would tolerate.

      Many of those high ranking NASA bureaucrats would be long gone if they tried to push as hard as they are today back in say 2010. Betting the farm and ranch on commercial (Elon) back in 2010 was insane. You were viewed as crazy. It was the right thing to do but it wasn’t easy.

      The SLS mafia is real and they have stifled a lot of creativity and progress. But we are about to enter another “golden era”. I am quite certain many inside NASA (and Gerst) will be more than capable of taking advantage of what SpaceX and Blue Origin will bring to the table.

      There is a lot that needs to be said… soon(tm).

      1. “Betting the farm and ranch on commercial (Elon) back in 2010 was insane. You were viewed as crazy. It was the right thing to do but it wasn’t easy.”

         It was insane for many good reasons…rather, insane for the lack of good reasons, I think, other than a few brave souls who believed that a different way was possible. To a large extent, many were going on little more than faith – a bit of an overstatement, but not much.

         “The proof is in the pudding”, as my mom used to say (and I never understood the allusion but did grok the meaning). In this case, the tech came to be the proof, thereby supporting policy decisions.

         EDIT: It follows that we should listen to the “current” crop of brave souls; the only problem being the difficulty of picking the winning horse…

      2. There has got to be more to it than that. I mean, yes, if you had said in 2010 that your mission was going to fly on a Falcon for half the cost of a Delta V, people would have thought you were nuts. But, at the same time, NASA funds lots of technology development projects (e.g. in space propulsion) that are way less likely to work than Falcon seemed in 2010. Maybe it’s a mix of willingness to throw money at research and development programs combined with a bureaucratic conservatism against counting on anything new. Which is an odd mix, but perhaps not too strange by the standards of government policy…

         1. The rationale behind the current sensibility that the government shouldn’t “pick the winning horse” has escaped me; these and other projects being examples.

            1. In this case, I don’t think it’s a matter of picking the winning horse, just how much you’re willing to bet on a long shot.

               But when it comes to picking the winner, I think there are some laws about favoring one company over another, when it comes to handing out government funding. NASA does, in fact, pick who to fund. But they do it by picking the criteria before deciding who best satisfies it. At least in theory.

5. Why would anyone think that NASA has the collective knowledge to decide whether or not Space-X is ready to proceed to launch? Space-X seems to have far more recent experience. Hopefully Elon was chairing the FRR?

   1. Because NASA gets to decide whether they will put their astronauts on a Dragon 2 in about half a year. This is not a test flight. It is a demonstration flight, as in a flight which will demonstrate to NASA that the vehicle is safe. So NASA has a say in whether or not the flight will check off all the right boxes required for NASA certification.

      1. And I would guess that’s why EM isn’t interested in any NASA involvement with SH or Starship development. Well at least not until he has it flying, then I suspect there would be less ability for NASA to push back on requirements. More this is available, do you want to use it as is?
         Cheers
         Neil

         1. I don’t personally know what involvement NASA has in SX projects not performed under NASA contracts and I suspect that neither does anyone else here.

            I DO know this: there’s not a single rocket development program on Earth that does not owe obeisance to NASA. Mr. Musk has said as much, and frequently, and with apparent sincerity.

            There is a very good reason that the Agency frequently seems to be walking around with arrows in its back.

            1. It really depends on what you mean by involvement. Over the years, NASA has published lots of technical reports, they can be found in libraries (at least libraries of universities with good aerospace engineering departments) and I’m sure the people at SpaceX have read them. They may have also gotten some free (or bartered) advice. I know, back when they were considering the Red Dragon mission to Mars, they and NASA had a deal about trading entry-decent-and-landing data for advice on interplanetary navigation. And, of course, when SpaceX flies out of Kennedy, they are using some NASA services. I assume they have to pay for that, as well as rent on the facilities. And, as you point out, that’s a huge advantage. If they had to do it all on their own, I don’t think they could have. Even Blue Origin, with Mr. Bezos’ billion dollar a year of funding, isn’t starting from scratch. And Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck has admitted building their own launch facility at Mahia, New Zealand, was a big mistake.

               But, when all’s said and done, how different is that NASA support different from what NACA (or the current NASA’s aeronautical engineering side) have done for aviation? In a sense, that’s what government-funded research and development is about. Taking the technology to the point where commercial companies can run with it. But it doesn’t mean Boeing pays royalties to NASA or has to follow NASA advice on the eventual test plans for a 797.

            2. You might be unpleasantly surprised by how *little* working engineers in the industry read the freely available technical reports; it is very common to refer to things like “They encountered this problem on program K, why won’t that happen again”, and get blank looks and questions like “what was program K?”

            3. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m the one who’s said, “They encountered this problem on program K. What were you thinking when you did the same thing again?” Which doesn’t make you any friends. And saying so in advance doesn’t help either, since (1) people don’t like to be reminded of mistakes and (2) knowing about past mistakes associates you with projects which made mistakes.

               But at least, in the case of SpaceX and the NASA technical reports, the information is publicly available and could have been used. All too often NASA lessons learned documents just happen to have too much export-controlled or corporate-proprietary information. And there’s no funding to redact that. So it can be hard to get a copy, unless you happen to work at the right NASA center.

            4. I want to expand on this: “there’s not a single rocket development program on Earth that does not owe obeisance to NASA”

               NASA is frequently criticized, often with parochial bitterness, and very frequently so narrowly that the message is lost.

               Criticism of our Agency, and the work it has accomplished, is often mean in spirit, defocused, and of little constructive value. it is something that we Americans do, and do well.

               Amongst all of this chatter and silliness, NASA has earned my respect, affection, and support. Here’s why:

               The breadth of NASA’s broad and deep accomplishments include technology and original research, stand alone.

               Indeed: Where on our planet is another national effort equal to the mandate of America’s NASA?

               Yes, the Agency stumbles, from time to time. And not infrequently a face palm is exactly the correct response.

               Still: I urge any NASA observer to take the big picture, to apply some patience, and simply watch. Year after year, decade after decade, you will continue to be amazed.

               And don’t miss the arrows.

            5. Commercial Crew, and USAF launch provider certification, has pretty much forced SpaceX to fix the Falcon 9 design at the block 5 level. They can’t really tweak things like they used to without having to justify the tweak to both NASA and the USAF.

               Starship and Super Booster are another thing entirely. They’re new and are not being developed with funds from NASA or DOD. So, at least at this time, SpaceX only has to worry about their ability to procure launch licenses from the FAA for Starship/Super Booster. FAA is a lot easier to deal with, IMHO.

            6. Their plans are to eventually phase out the Falcon 9 in favor of Starship and Super Heavy. At some point, they’ll have to deal with NASA and DoD certification or give up on government contracts.

               I also wonder if SpaceX could have two parallel versions of the Falcon 9, one the Block 5 for the government, and one with additional refinements. There may be quality control requirements in the way. I know some certifications (testing for space-rating electronics was the one I ran into) require doing everything in the same way, every time. Using the same line for a Falcon 9 Bock 5 and 6 might be an issue, and a building new line would be expensive. In any case, I get the feeling SpaceX doesn’t think there’s enough to gain from a Block 6, and going to Starship is a better choice.

            7. Interesting comment, Jeff, but I have to admit I can’t see how you are responding to my comment. Maybe I need another cup of coffee?!

            8. Looking at this again, I agree my reply to you doesn’t make any sense when taken in context. I may have clicked on the wrong “reply” button in my browser? Maybe I should have had more coffee yesterday.

            9. You would be the first to go off on a tangent!

            10. “They can’t really tweak things like they used to without having to justify the tweak to both NASA and the USAF.”

                Yep. This would be a great example of the negative effects of what some call ‘governmental interference’, and what I prefer to call the expression of customer preferences.

            11. Except for the little fact that the rest of SpaceX’s commercial customers don’t care nearly as much as NASA and the USAF how SpaceX does its job. The commercial customers care whether or not their payload is put into the correct orbit. Beyond that, they don’t care about the how.

                There are reasons that SpaceX charges both NASA and the USAF more for a launch than its commercial customers. It’s primarily because of they want to stick their noses into how SpaceX does its job. There are no doubt meetings and government employees who have to sign off that things are done. That costs SpaceX time and money, so they pass those costs on to their government customers.

         2. I don’t think it’s ever going to be that easy, at least not for a long time. Even for unmanned launches, NASA and DoD have requirements on launch services, criteria for certification and they pay extra for greater-than-usual visibility into what how the launch provider is doing things (which, if memory serves, adds about 30 to 50% to the cost of a Falcon 9 launch.)

            The criteria for certification are based on the importance of the payload. NASA would be willing to fly CubeSats on one of the small startup’s rockets (hoping that this time it would be their first successful flight…) But NASA will not launch the Europa Clipper on a ULA Vulcan. That isn’t even on the table until they’ve had six successful flights. I assume anything with astronauts on it is slightly more of a Class A mission than a flagship robotic spacecraft…

            But you are right about the basic idea: The level of oversight and the requirements for certification are probably going to go down. Falcon 9 and Dragon 2 are very new thing for NASA. Once (and if) Starship is flying, and has done so a few times, NASA might use standards which aren’t too much stricter than those they’d use for flying a flagship robotic mission on a Falcon Heavy.

      2. Does NASA have the same say when a astronaut gets into a car? A motorcycle? An Airliner? A bicycle?

         NASA astronauts have spent their entire lives on mechanical transportation systems they have had absolutely no say in the matter. NASA is not a regulartory agency.

         1. In a sense, yes. NASA does have a say in employees traveling in cars, motorcycles, airplanes and, I suppose, even bikes. Certainly when traveling on business and sometimes in their free time. Before you say that’s nonsense, let me be more specific.

            NASA employees can’t rent a car or a motorcycle on official travel unless it’s from a reputable company, the vehicle has passed the usual inspections, etc. Similarly, air travel on business has to be on an airline which follows all the FAA rules. Or, I guess, a military aircraft following the military’s safety rules. Even outside of work, I think there was one case where an astronaut was told he wouldn’t get a flight assignment unless he gave up driving race cars as a hobby. So NASA does have policies about safety and the forms of terrestrial transportation employees can use.

            But, in the terrestrial cases, they defer to other government agencies. If the FAA says flying on United is fine but Lion Air is not, NASA takes their word for it. If the Department of Transportation and the state agencies say renting a car from Avis is fine, but renting from some random guy the traveler happens to know isn’t, NASA goes along with that. In the case of flying to orbit, there isn’t another government agency NASA can turn to, so they have to decide on their own. I don’t think they just blindly trust the vendor in any case.

            1. They are having a say to the astronaut . they are not having a say in how Ford builds a vehicle or how a Harley is built .. that is my point.. they are not a regulatory agency… They should not be in the business of that .. we have the FAA and DOT for those roles and functions.

            2. No, as a matter of fact, they are saying that to the companies as well as the employees. If they said, “In order to reduce carbon emissions, we will only use rental car companies which offer the option of renting an electric vehicle,” they could. (Ok, that would be unlikely under the current administration, but not unimaginable if Clinton had won in 2016…) They would not be requiring Avis to have electric cars in their fleet. Nor would they be requiring Ford to make them.

               They are simply saying, “if you want our business, do it; if you don’t, we’ll go somewhere else.” That’s the difference between a NASA policy and regulation. When the FAA says do it, Boeing and United have to do it. When NASA says something, they can say, “no thanks, we’ll do without your business.”

               But in the case of Falcon 9 and Dragon 2, we’re in a somewhat unique situation. NASA can’t turn to the FAA or DoT for expert advice. There _isn’t_ a regulatory agency responsible for safe, human launches to orbit. They can, however, put conditions on the services they are willing to purchase. Those conditions do not apply to SpaceX or Boeing selling seats to tourists or anyone else.

            3. Then I must have misunderstood and NASA has reviews of all makes and models of all forms of mechanical transportation devices and conduct product safety reviews on anything an astronaut may put their hand to. Do they conduct these safety reviews for vehicles in general that NASA utilizes at NASA centers also or are these product reviews only conducted on vehicles an astronaut may drive in?

            4. Why would they do that? They can save a whole lot of time and effort by turning to other government agencies. DoT and various state agencies _do_ review vehicles of all makes and models and conduct product safety reviews. Now, exactly which government agency can NASA turn to for similar advice on launching astronauts into orbit? Last time I checked, there were none.

               So what would you suggest NASA do? Blind trust in the service provider isn’t an option. The problem, to the extent that there is one, is not that NASA is making sure the vehicle and launch services meet its requirements. The problem is that NASA (and especially NASA’s external safety advisory panel, ASAP) seem to gone a bit overboard, at least in my opinion.

               Oh, and in terms of vehicles NASA buys and uses itself, sure. They do look at the options and compare them to their needs. They do, in a government version of checking _Consumer_Reports_ or similar sources, study what those different makes and models are really like. And they do look over the actual vehicles before buying them. Would you, personally, buy a car without doing something very similar?

            5. My apologies.. I am just tired of the politics surrounding space transportation and it’s move from a government monopsony to the private sector. I just can’t believe there is no politics involved in these decisions on safety.

            6. It’s really two questions, and I’m sorry I was stuck on the one you weren’t thinking of. The first question is whether NASA has the legal authority to have certification requirements and reviews for Dragon 2 and Starliner. They do, so I was surprised you were objecting. But the second question is whether or not they are using that legal authority appropriately. Since politics tends to creep into everything, that’s a good question.

               If it is, I can’t say it’s a SpaceX versus Boeing bais. They are giving Boeing a hard time as well, and the only ways SpaceX seems to have gotten a harder time were the load-and-go fueling (which I would expect because it’s a non-traditional practice not because it’s SpaceX) and the whole safety culture review provoked by Mr. Musk taking one puff from a joint (which was stupid since it produced a stupid but predictable reaction from a government bureaucracy.)

               Has there been some general foot dragging within NASA over commercial crew? I wouldn’t be shocked. Lots of people, inside and outside NASA, don’t think commercial crew is a good idea, and bureaucrats have been known to “support” official policy by deliberately insisting on doing things the hard way. But I don’t believe in conspiracy stories, so I’d be hard to convince if you think their is a organized, coordinated foot dragging campaign.

               Then we get to people just doing their job. If managers say “we put safety first” enough, some people actually start thinking they mean it. In reality, no one really means that. Just ask if they’d spend a trillion dollars and fifty years to save one life. But people can be myopic and focus on what they’re told their job is. The people told their job is safety assurance will focus on that, and may act as if nothing else matters. I’d say that’s an especially serious issue when you make changes and give people less control over and visibility into the process.

               Which takes me to the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP.) They are specifically chartered by Congress after the Apollo 1 fire, to make sure NASA did not take risks with astronauts lives, and the Challenger and Columbia accidents only made them more serious about that job. In a world where we’re (hopefully) shifting to an approach more like civil aviation and purchasing transportation services, that sort of external advisory panel doesn’t really fit. The FAA doesn’t have one. It has the National Transportation Safety Board, which does not review every vehicle and every take off, but does a fine job. Unfortunately, I think the ASAP really was established by an act of Congress (as opposed to a congressional committed writing a nasty letter to the NASA Administrator and telling him to do it.) That means it probably requires an act of Congress to change the current system.

            7. We’re going to see a rapid shift in regulatory authority once commercial passengers start flying to orbit on private vehicles. As I understand it, the FAA isn’t much concerned with safety, except as it applies to launch safety (i.e. bits of your vehicle won’t kill people on the ground). So, providers mostly need to provide their passengers with the proper informed consent on how dangerous the flight will be.

               NASA’s ability to regulate the vehicles it uses to fly astronauts into space will continue, for some time. But ultimately, I look forward to the day when the FAA does have the expertise to regulate the industry so that NASA won’t have to do this anymore.

            8. I suspect it’s actually going to change in both directions. I agree with you about NASA relaxing, and with luck that will happen after the Dragon 2 and Starliner demonstration flights. (Although I’ll only bet on that if you offer good odds…)

               But the FAA approach is also going to change. I think Virgin and Blue Origin are currently working under some test or experimental vehicle status, and they may be able to find a loophole to continue doing so when they start flying passengers. But that won’t last forever. It may take a billionaire tourist getting killed, but at some point I suspect the FAA (or some other regulatory agency) is going to raise the requirements to something like current civil aviation.

               I think that’s not a bad thing. Despite how completely many passengers ignore safety rules and common sense, the US has a really amazing level of aviation safety. These days, virtually all fatal accidents are in countries with laxer safety regulations.

            9. When I was flying back and forth to Japan to train the first Japanese astronauts, NASA would have happily bungee-corded me to the wing of the plane if it would have saved them a dollar. Because that option wasn’t offered, they instead put me in the back of the plane in a center seat with the Thai gun-runners and dope smugglers and Turkish cigarette smokers who tended to congregate there. True is.

            10. And now we have to show a justification to fly on a non-US carrier (and if it’s a code share with a international partner, pay more if necessary, to book through a US carrier…) I’ll avoid saying whether or not the Thai gun runners would be better company than some people I’ve been stuck sitting next to… But even “lowest cost tickets no matter what” is still NASA policy on which airlines they let people use.

            11. I was OK with them until they clogged up the toilet and the “fluid” began to flow across the floor and got my feet wet. “Honestly, fellows,” I said, stepping into the aisle to get their attention, “this is really atrocious behavior.” You should have seen their embarrassed faces. A few even put their knives down.

            12. And, if you will forgive me, we are all the better that you survived.

   2. Why would anyone think NASA doesn’t?

6. A very nice note from Bill Gerstenmaier, to be sure. I could use some help deciphering part of it, though:

   The tools that we have today are very sophisticated and are radically better than Apollo. However, the process of reviewing readiness for flight is still fundamentally the same. By building on the past, staying humble and being open to learning we can improve on the ways of the past

   Does he say here that current review procedures are in some way not suitable when applied to current tech?

   1. No, that’s not how I read it. The process, the reviews and what they cover and what you’re expected to show in order to pass, haven’t changed radically. At a Preliminary Design Review, you need to show the concept, the overall design and the requirements and resources for each system are well defined and that you have a viable plan for how to build each one. At a Launch (or Flight) Readiness Review, you need to show that what you built will actually do what it’s supposed to do and you know how to operate it and make it do what it’s supposed to do.

      But how you do that has changed. Consider contingency plans. At a FRR, you had better say you’ve got a list of things that could go wrong, you have identified the likely ones, have written procedures for dealing with them (reviewed, signed off on and under document control) and know how to go from seeing anomalous telemetry to identifying the problem to getting the correct procedure to the astronaut in a short time.

      During the Apollo program, that last step would involve talking about the number of people staffing mission control, their training and the number of simulated launches they had done, how all the procedures were printed up and on bookshelves right next to mission control, and how mission control and the astronauts would be in constant contact. (Except on the far side of the Moon, and you’d get to explain why that exception was ok.) Today, you’d probably talk more about the fancy relational database, the software to rapidly associate anomalous telemetry with likely faults, and how all the procedures were loaded on the capsule’s computer and right at the astronauts fingertips. Those are very different solutions, in terms of technology, but it’s addressing the same issues, and the reviews are still designed to make sure that issue is addressed.

      I will slightly disagree, since the way reviews have been conducted has evolved. From what I’ve heard from people who’ve been in the business longer than myself, things have changed in just the last twenty five years. The reviews tend to go into less technical detail, cover a larger number of things at a higher level, and involve flashy presentations. All that creates room for a competent snake oil salesman can use to sweep problems under the rug, and I find that a disturbing trend.

      In a sense, I blame Microsoft. Not because I like blaming them for things (even if I do) but because PowerPoint has become ubiquitous and it forces people into a certain style. For example, the use of large type, sentence fragments and vague and non-technical statements. Try putting equations or real tables and plots of engineering data into PowerPoint. We do it all the time, but you have to fight with it’s built-in assumptions about what users want and are trying to do. There was even a study commissioned by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, and half a page of the CAIB report is a summary on how PowerPoint just invites miscommunication when details are passed up from engineers to lower and middle management to senior decision makers.

7. Wow, I’m indescribably jealous of that FRR badge! Awesome find, a very cool piece of space Americana!

   1. I’m a little jealous as well. The closest I can come is a loose leaf binder with “Mariner Jupiter-Saturn Test Procedures” on the cover. (That was renamed Voyager in 1978.)

8. Several things about this whole business pop into this fevered brain:
   Rumors had it that NASA is concerned about the parachutes that will be used to recover the Dragon 2 (D-2?). Why? How much heavier than a Shuttle SRB is the D-2? Nobody has said. Are they concerned about the speed of reentry that a drogue chute will have to withstand (compared, say, with an SRB-Decelerator Subsystem (SRB-DSS) drogue. Nobody has said.
   I may be too optimistic, but it would seem to me that SpaceX would not want a failure during the Demo-1 flight…or any other for that matter, whether it is carrying NASA astronauts or civilians…especially the Japanese industrialist! It’s bad for business!
   As for FAA involvement, how quickly did they insist on inerting the B-747 centerline tanks after TWA Flight 800 exploded, killing 250-odd civilian passengers? Wasn’t it something like 10 years before all those aircraft type were required to be in compliance?
   Also, somehow, the cynic in me has to question all the rumors and innuendo with SpaceX, with CST-100’s first flight several months behind Demo-1. I mean, how dare this upstart compete with a company that goes back to the early days of commercial aviation? (Sarcasm mode OFF!) Of course, NASA and the Russians and the Japanese, et al, do have a legitimate concern about whether the D-2 can successfully dock with the ISS, without an astronaut on board to back up the autonomous system, to prevent the capsule from dinging the station.
   Well, best of luck to SpaceX!

9. We had a tour of Downey when I was a student at UCLA in the early 80s.

10. I hate to say it, but a SpaceX DM-1 failure shouldn’t compromise commercial crew. Unless someone has made a fairly serious mistake. I though the rational for selecting two companies and vehicles was redundancy; to make sure at least one would work. If so, commercial crew and ISS crew rotations should be able to go ahead with Starliner, even the Dragon-2 DM-1 flight is a failure. That is, unless someone forgot the point of having two service providers, and Boeing can’t ram up to support a greater number of missions. If they can’t, it’s a problem and I’d say a serious mistake.

11. Well it IS a small world after all… I was at Rockwell Downey same time as you Keith, Building One.. went over Satellite Systems Division in Seal Beach at bit later.. I think I was in Hydraulic Design at the time, but was loaned out to everyone because of my CAD 3-D modeling expertise.. a bit later I was running the CAD systems for both Downey and Seal Beach..

12. This flight is crying for a stowaway.

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