Of Trends and Starships
The possible ramifications of the recent SpaceX Startship accident.
Individual launch failures do not kill launch providers, but patterns of them do. This latest launch failure by SpaceX reflects a dangerous pattern that threatens the very existence of SpaceX in a way that most of its fans aren't seeing. They say, “Well, SpaceX is great. They'll be fine.”
No they won't, not if this trend continues.
On January 16th of this year, a hopeful test-flight of Starship intended to test-deploy Starlink satellite mockups and attempt a soft landing in the Indian Ocean. However, very near the end of Starship’s orbital insertion burn, engines began to shut down prematurely, causing the ship to begin to point in the wrong direction. They say that it had already begun to break apart when the explosives onboard detected that it was off course and destroyed the spacecraft. The accident investigation determined that harmonic resonance earlier in the flight had damaged the propulsion system, leading to fuel leaks, which led to fires that eventually caused engines to shut down and later led to an explosion.
I find it interesting that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allowed SpaceX to fly Starship again less than two months later, even though their investigation was still open. This was due to their confidence in SpaceX and the corrective actions that SpaceX implemented. That might have been a mistake.
On March 8th, SpaceX attempted to fly Starship again. Again, the engines began to shut off early, near the end of the final burn, causing the ship to again tumble and explode. They probably blew it up again because it began to wander off course.
I should note that these were uncrewed test flights and there were no injuries, but airplane flights had to be grounded or rerouted both times to avoid the falling debris.
I’m saying “again” a lot here. Typically, in any industry, repeated, similar mishaps that occur back to back like that say more about the mishap investigation process of the company conducting them than they do about unsafe technology or equipment. It can also point to lax oversight on the part of applicable government agencies.
Why did this problem wait until flights 7 and 8 and did not occur on earlier flights? That question should be asked and answered. Such catastrophic levels of harmonic resonance have not caused these problems on previous flights. The hull length for the Starships of flights 7 and 8 was longer than on previous flights by 3-6 feet to increase how much fuel it could carry. I suppose that could create the conditions for something like harmonic resonance to change. However, harmonic resonance has been a common issue throughout the history of spaceflight, mitigated far ahead of flight time with no secrets that can’t be modeled mathematically.
If harmonic resonance was indeed identified as the root cause, why did they not address that? The mitigation that SpaceX took for flight 8 was to strengthen the systems to account for the resonance. Why? That question needs to be asked and answered.
Why did the FAA display an attitude of confidence in a corrective action that did not directly address the reported root cause? Did it have anything to do with Elon being the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, currently going from agency to agency, cutting Federal jobs and programs? Elon has complained many times about the sluggish launch license approval process at the FAA. Shortly after the second flight accident, Donald Trump reminded agency heads are in charge, not Elon Musk. Is conflict of interest a concern regarding Elon auditing the FAA?
In my workplace in a different industry, my coworkers have found that I get very annoyed by what I call Whack-A-Mole problem-solving. That is where proper root cause analysis, identification, and/or mitigation selection is bypassed, and the technicians take action based on W.A.S. (Wild Ass Guesses). They don’t do it anymore. The repeat of what appears to be the same accident on Starship flights 7 and 8 is a common symptom of Whack-A-Mole problem-solving. In the spaceflight industry, multiple layers of documented processes exist in both industry and government to prevent it.
I like SpaceX. I want them to succeed, and if allowed to continue, this pattern can put that success at risk. SpaceX flies people to the International Space Station on a different vehicle than this, and they plan to someday fly people to orbiting space stations, the Moon, and Mars on Starship. They jeopardize all those plans if they bypass proper investigative and corrective action procedures when their rockets explode.
Let’s fly again, but this time, let’s do a proper investigation and not make the same mistake twice…umm…I mean three times.