Ideally, lobbyists (aka bribery brokers) should not be allowed the opportunity to negotiate and affect established safety regulations (especially regs birthed from disasters), much less even exist.
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Sure. But rockets aren’t just magically toxic. Chemistry is a thing, and we can make some reasonable predictions about what harm a crashed or exploding rocket can do based on what’s in it.
The rockets which fucked up parts of Kazakhstan were chock full of stuff like nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine – which are both pretty nasty.
The rockets being tested down in Texas…aren’t. To a first order approximation, they’re just methane, oxygen and stainless steel. All of which are pretty benign. I mean, they’re making a small contribution to global warming, and they certainly might kill you pretty dead if you’re standing in the wrong place when one botches a landing. Otherwise, they’re about as safe as you can expect a rocket to be.
AFAIK, the Starship designs don’t even use small amounts of toxic hypergolic maneuvering fuel or anything. When the last one crashed, human people – and lizard people, if you count Musk – were walking around in the debris almost as soon as the flames were out. Sans hazmat suits. That’d be a lot less healthful after, say, a Proton-M crash.
I mean, the answer is because Musk is an insufferable asshole who drives sensible people up the wall and probably takes way to much credit for the work people are doing at “his” companies. But you’re right, in this particular case that’s not really what’s going on, and the kneejerk strawman is lazy.
IMO, Ars Technica has a much better article on this whole thing. Elon’s twitter rants aside, it sounds like you’re exactly right – the primary problem here is that there really is a mismatch going on between the FAA and the increased cadence of R&D and private launches going on in the space industry. It’s simply understaffed and not properly set up for it right now. Even the the FAA apparently recognizes this, and is working on putting more resources into streamlining reviews and approvals and so forth.
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I see no evidence that Tesla reopened their factory in New York and switched to manufacture of ventilators as promised but they did donate some from Chinese surplus eventually, not quite the type they wanted but hey…
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So the guy buys and donates machines which help people to breath. Said machines aren’t the most awesome type possible. Now let’s all jump down his throat for not donating the best kind of machine! Nevermind that the type donated helps prevent moderate cases from getting worse and reduces the need for the best kind or any of that noise! Let’s rage anyway because he used the word “ventilator” and we are going to make sure that we use the definition of the word which excludes the type of machine that was donated.
Regarding Tesla manufactured machines, it looks like they pivoted from making entire machines (not the actual bottleneck Medtronic was suffering from) but instead manufacturing a critical component that was preventing the manufacturer from ramping up. This is different from what I suggested above but I would suggest is a better outcome overall.
I’d love for you to explain how that’s possible in a country that enshrines freedom of speech into its legal foundations. This also would mean labor unions, teacher unions, BLM, environmental organizations, and other groups could not lobby. Note: They do so all the time.
Now, laws prohibiting the revolving door between private sector/for-profit lobbying efforts, and serving in government, I am totally behind.
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First, allow me to clarify that not all lobbying activities involve promises of money or questionable favors; my paintbrush is wide, these days.
Second, lobbying (almost by definition) occurs out of the public eye; in my opinion, lobbying instead in a public forum should, functionally, be no more difficult… unless tainted influence is the goal.
Third, I agree re revolving doors.
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I’ve actually been thinking about the idea of becoming, essentially, an independent lobbyist. It’s not too difficult – spend more time engaging with represented officials. Even maybe starting up a PAC (I hear it’s easy enough high-schoolers do it for projects), and start engaging in some of the type of “guerrilla media activities” I wish I was seeing more of. I have some friends involved in liberal/progressive media who seem keen to lend a hand. The fun thing about the DIY approach to lobbying is, as you said, you can kind of go about it “the right way.”
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I’ve spent way too much mental energy than is strictly healthy thinking about Musk already but it’s symptomatic of an arch bullshitter like him - pinch out a tweet offering the moon on a stick and then react like a broflake when someone dares call him on it. It makes me queasy to think that the future of space travel may be in the hands of Randroid sociopaths like him.
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If Musk is such a libertarian maybe he should start his own fucking country where he can make and break all the rules he wants.
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I mean, that’s pretty clearly why he wants to go to Mars in the first place. Why anyone else should want to go with him, I don’t know.
You know, when I was little the idea of human civilization making interplanetary colonies seemed like a dream. But if it wasn’t clear before, the change from the public to private sector’s idea of civilization defining them has made it certain they are supposed to be a nightmare.
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One of the goals of the space regulations is to make sure people don’t cause diplomatic incidents by dropping crap on other countries … Musk has set himself up a couple of km from the Mexican border …
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Ah, so this is why he bought those offshore drilling platfoms awhile back.
If he launches outside the Territorial Waters, then the FAA can’t do diddlly.
Of course, he will have Hurricane Season to contend with (and possible harrassment from
the Coast Guard)…
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Now imagine that computer could feasibly fly itself from the US to a nuclear superpower we’re not on good terms with, then blow up killing lots of those people.
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Sorry, Elon. As much as I agree that a huge number of our regulatory systems need updating in a whole bunch of ways… this ain’t gonna fly.
The way a sane company goes about weakening regulatory systems (aside from playing political games) is by having such a sterling track record over a long enough timescale that they can make a truly compelling case to the people in charge (note: that isn’t you!) that the rules have no effect other than holding them back, and/or are actively preventing them from being even safer.
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That doesn’t really make sense on at least a couple of levels.
For one thing, “weakening” isn’t necessarily a useful descriptor here.
We can all agree that we want strong food safety regulation, for example. But if the regulatory body interprets that as, say, requiring a bakery to get agency pre-approval every time they open a new bag of flour, maybe that’s just not the right approach. Would it be “weakening” food safety regulation to let the bakery open its own bags of flour and instead spend more time and attention on things that probably represent bigger actual risk points in the food industry?
That’s this engine swap thing in a nutshell. I don’t have any reason to doubt that pre-approval for that was written into whatever FAA operating guidelines were in effect, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If the engineers building the darn thing thought the original engine was questionable, I’m not sure why the FAA actually wants to butt into their decision to replace it with a new part. It kind of seems like the engineers would know best. And what’s the downside? Worst case is this heavily experimental rocket explodes spectacularly – which everyone more or less expects it to do anyway.
Because that’s the thing: you’re implying that spacex’s record of big booms means they should be subject to extra regulatory scrutiny until they clean up their act or something, but that’s kind of a straw man. This instance isn’t about regulating a production rocket, like Falcon is now, or a passenger flight service or anything. Starship is an avowedly experimental rocket which has, at best, maybe a 50/50 chance of surviving the flight.
What’s the proper role for a regulator in that context? Airspace and range safety: definitely. Evaluating worst-case environmental impacts: absolutely.
Micromanaging the serial numbers on the engine components? Much less clear.
(As an aside, people like to tease spacex for its exploding rockets – some of them in earnest – but it’s actually an extremely smart way to innovate. There are much broader lessons there for other areas, including, believe it or not, regulation and government policy.
One of the problems we’ve hit in the US and Europe is being far too conservative and risk averse in the public sector. We expect something like a new health care initiative to roll out to everyone and work perfectly on the first try. If it doesn’t, well, big government has screwed up again and heads should roll. It makes everyone terrified of actually trying anything genuinely new.
And that’s a big problem. A certain amount of tolerance to failure is necessary in any area where we actually want to learn and advance. Obviously you don’t want to recklessly risk lives or anything, but encouraging a certain level of experimentation and risk taking in policy, and accepting honest failure gracefully, can be very beneficial. There are places, I think Singapore is an example, which do a better job of this.)
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Maybe if the engineers think there’s a problem with their engine, they should focus on not flying it until they fix it, or coordinate with the FAA to add another engine to the cleared list of parts so that they can perform their test, instead of flouting their already-established agreement with the FAA to only use the parts that have been cleared for use. Neither of those options in any way inhibit experimentation, they just enable it to proceed with knowledge of the actual risks being taken.
Taking an extra week or two between tests to make sure you’ve done your due diligence with the FAA isn’t going to materially impact Musk’s time horizon for living out his libertarian paradise powered by indentured servitude on Mars.
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This sentence also makes me wonder if you understand what happened.
They did fix it. That’s the point.
We’re not talking about an engine redesign or anything. The “replacement” was swapping an engine with a (presumably identical) spare part. I.e., fixing the damage.
The background is that this particular rocket did a bunch of extended static test fires a couple of weeks ago. Those are even harder on some of the engine parts than actual flight, and inspection afterward must have shown more wear and tear than they were comfortable with for the test flight. Hence, replacement parts before the big day.
Also facts not in evidence. A couple of weeks is already looking pretty optimistic.
Contra some of the discussion here, it seems like spacex was following the rules, at least with SN9*. After all, the FAA was obviously notified of the SN9 engine swap before launch. That’s why they halted the launch and SN9 is grounded for now.
This issue is that, well, SN9 is still grounded. My understanding is that the FAA has decided that the repairs somehow made it a whole new vehicle, so the original clearances no longer apply and spacex needs to go back to square one in the clearance process. That might take quite a while, especially with the FAA’s space division being under-staffed. The original clearances were probably started months ago.
It that is indeed the situation, I think it’s reasonable for Spacex to be asking some pointed questions about that, and perhaps making a case for more appropriate/flexible rules going forward.
(*There’s apparently also some complaint about a violation during the SN8 flight. Not an engine swap AFAIK – the FAA won’t say what. Those concerns obviously might be playing a role in the SN9 delay.)
They’re good to go:
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Aaaannnnd… BOOM.
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