What's NASA Up To And Other Space Stuff

[EyeKhan]

Were you watching the CRS16 mission? That was a pretty spectacular splashdown.

I saw video of the booster take a bath, lol. That was a brand new booster, too. Musk said a hydraulic pump operating the guidance fin failed and there are no backups (for now). Oops.

It's cool to be able to literally watch the learning curve progress.

[ar81]

I saw video of the booster take a bath, lol. That was a brand new booster, too. Musk said a hydraulic pump operating the guidance fin failed and there are no backups (for now). Oops.

It's cool to be able to literally watch the learning curve progress.

Backup means more weight and less payload.
In the other hand, lack of backup means a loss of $60 million booster.
The price of innovation in aerospace usually is loss of hardware due to unforseen bugs.

[EyeKhan]

Backup means more weight and less payload.
In the other hand, lack of backup means a loss of $60 million booster.
The price of innovation in aerospace usually is loss of hardware due to unforseen bugs.

There might also be some fix to make in the pump design/ manufacturing process to increase it's reliability. Then they don't sacrifice payload capacity and still reduce the chance of crashing a booster.

[ar81]

There might also be some fix to make in the pump design/ manufacturing process to increase it's reliability. Then they don't sacrifice payload capacity and still reduce the chance of crashing a booster.

All hardware with moving parts will eventually fail.
AS9100 standards are not that good. Failures do not abide by clauses, standards use clause based structure.
What is certain is that it does not add confidence to NASA to send an astronaut because either purchasing or manufacturing of parts seem to have a big hole.
And in aerospace, it is a big deal.

Even painting hardware is supervised. Painting may be vulnerable to all kind of problems, from small bubbles inside painting expanding and causing aerodinamic effects, to coating cracks, and so on. You may notice that the first SpaceX capsule was plain white. No logos. Imagine that even painting is a big deal. Now a malfunction in a critical pump must cause real concern. It already would be bad if you went to a store and you had a DOA pump. For aerospace it is unacceptable. Space and hypersonic flight is far more hostile than people think.

I can imagine NASA not seeing SpaceX as a safe option and I would not blame them. Boeing may have had many scandals and it may overbudget or have bureacratic delays, but experienced personnel use to deliver. So this failed pump complicates SpaceX race to deliver a man into space.